Owens Valley Dust to Settle, but Not Fears

By ERIC BAILEY

July 31, 2000 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

KEELER, Calif. — Behind the counter at the post office, the only going concern in this parched Owens Valley town of 75 souls, Geizel Rice can see it coming.

With maddening regularity, huge, boiling clouds of dust whip off the bone-dry bed of Owens Lake. Like a frothy tidal wave, the dust sends Keeler’s hardy inhabitants fleeing for cover--and routinely creates the nation’s worst particle air pollution.

A cure for the dust plague appears near. But folks here in the Owens Valley--home to California’s most epic water war--worry that the medicine could be as nasty as the malady.

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, the agency that bled dry Owens Lake and created the horrific dust storms when it began exporting water to Southern California in 1913, is about to embark on a massive, $62-million effort to fix the damage it wrought.

In the coming weeks, construction is to begin on a 5-foot-wide pipeline to divert Los Angeles Aqueduct water to the lake bed, where more than 13 square miles will be turned into a mud flat to keep down the dust.

Keeler residents such as Rice are grateful that their dust woes may soon recede. But now they have a new slate of concerns, from mosquitoes to the disruption that will be caused by construction.

Mostly, though, they worry about the ground water.

In the past, water officials have proposed pumping briny, undrinkable water from beneath the lake for the project, sparing the precious drinking water from elsewhere in the valley that they’d prefer to export south.

But Keeler residents roared in dismay over the plan, which they fear would also dry up the town’s only well. DWP officials agreed to tap the aqueduct while new studies are done.

In the meantime, the huge water agency is wrangling with Inyo County officials over a separate proposal they insist has nothing to do with the lake project: to boost by nearly 50% the pumping of fresh ground water elsewhere in the valley. The jump from 63,000 acre-feet a year to about 93,000 annually would mark the first significant increase in a decade.

That proposed boost revives fears among locals that pumping will wilt plants already weakened by generations of water exports to Los Angeles. DWP officials say not to worry, that a pumping increase is justified by research showing the valley’s plant life has rebounded.

Doubters abound in the Owens Valley, a place of institutionalized distrust of the DWP rooted in the long-ago days when William Mulholland turned north for water to build a megalopolis. Some see this as yet another water grab by Los Angeles, a move meant to help offset the huge quantities that DWP expects to use on the lake.

“Just look at the record,” said Rice, a Costa Rica native grown fond of California’s isolated High Desert. “When they bought the water rights a century ago, they didn’t tell people they were going to dry out Owens Valley.”

As for Keeler, “if our well goes, we go,” Rice said. “Keeler would disappear.”

Worries extend up the valley. Some skeptics suggest that the effects of increased ground-water pumping will ripple far and wide, killing off native plants and trees.

“I’m worried about this whole valley becoming a dust bowl,” said Benett Kessler, a radio station owner long at odds with the DWP. “L.A. is bullying their way around, taking what they want. In the meantime, our trees and plants continue to die.”

A 35% loss in vegetation before the 1990s has been documented by the U.S. Geological Survey. The agency has advised a limit on ground-water pumping of 75,000 acre-feet annually from all sources throughout the valley.

Wesley Danskin, a Geological Survey research hydrologist who has studied Owens Valley, suspects the region is still recovering from the long drought that ended in the mid-1990s. A pumping hike will inevitably shrink the ground water available to plants.

“There’s no free lunch,” he said. “The whole valley is interconnected.”

Feeling Like a Conquered People

Ever since Los Angeles began secretively buying up water rights in Owens Valley shortly after the turn of the century, many residents in this narrow and picturesque valley have felt like a conquered people.

Los Angeles, intent on keeping a firm grip on water use, owns most of the valley floor. Farmland in the valley, once an agricultural mecca, dwindled from 75,000 acres in the 1920s to 12,000 today. Nearly every land use decision is controlled by distant landlords in Los Angeles, from siting a cemetery to expanding business at Bishop Airport.

“The city of Los Angeles owns this place,” said Greg James, Inyo County’s water director. “There’s little in the way of economic or public activity that doesn’t have to go through the city of Los Angeles for approval.”

Of late, historic battles that fueled the feud--the stealthy purchase of property, rivers bled dry, decades of court fights over environmental damage--have given way to an era of uneasy detente.

“Portraying us as evil or trying to do damage isn’t accurate,” said Chris Plakos, a DWP spokesman in Owens Valley. “It may have been true years ago, but not anymore.”

For many years, Los Angeles exported about 500,000 acre-feet of water annually from the valley, meeting nearly all the city’s needs. Most of the water came from Sierra rivers cascading into the valley. But after a second aqueduct was completed in 1970, the city cranked up its pumps and began siphoning Owens Valley ground water in earnest. During a few drought years that followed, half the city’s water came from beneath Owens Valley.

Inyo County sued in 1972. After two decades of warring in court, these bitter foes reached an accord. In essence, they agreed to take the needs of plant life in Owens Valley into consideration. Steep reductions in ground-water pumping followed the 1991 truce.

But now the DWP wants more.

“Our people believe we can increase pumping without causing damage to the environment,” Plakos said. “We have a mission, and that’s to provide reliable, low-cost water to L.A. and do it responsibly. It’s a balancing act.”

To control dust at Owens Lake, DWP experts at first believed they could tap salty water lurking beneath the 110-square-mile dry bed. Tests, however, found that pumping could lower fresh ground-water levels for several miles around, threatening surrounding wells. So, more studies are planned.

In the meantime, DWP will pipe in good drinking water from the Los Angeles Aqueduct to control the dust. To offset the loss to customers in Los Angeles, water purchases will be made from Northern California and the Colorado River. DWP officials say this will cost an additional $13 million a year.

Controlling the dust will be no small feat--and largely an evolving art. Past efforts have been conspicuous failures. Scientists tried setting up barricades to catch sand, and planting salt cedar trees and sage. Nothing worked very well. So, water officials will use a technique dubbed “shallow flooding.”

A test plot already is in place over a half-square-mile swath of lake bed. Water spread by buried pipes and nozzles has created a vast mud slick. A dank, swampy smell fills the air.

“It’s not like you’re going to see a Jet Ski concessionaire out here,” quipped Walt Sharer, field operations manager for the project.

Elsewhere, ankle-high salt grass sprouts from the lake bed. Officials hope the grass will prove to be a good dust solution and use far less water.

“We make no bones about it: Success for us is determined by how little water we can use to control the dust,” said Richard Harasick, DWP’s assistant director of water resources.

The dust storms are legendary.

Winds whipping over the Sierra or out of Nevada lift powdery particles high in the skies, generating pollution 50 times as bad as the worst Los Angeles smog day.

The tiny particles--laced with toxic heavy metals--lodge deep in the lungs, creating problems for anyone with asthma or a heart condition.

“If the wind comes off Mt. Whitney, we eat it,” said Alice Robertson, a mother of two young girls who has lived in Keeler for eight years.

“We can’t see across the street,” she said. “Afterward, I just go out and hose everything off.”

Back in its mining days, Keeler thrived with 7,000 residents. Today, those who remain are mostly elderly. Many live in sunbaked mobile homes or tiny houses once occupied by miners.

Along with a few newcomers, they prize the isolation, the crime-free peace far from urban woes.

When Los Angeles comes calling, doors are bolted.

Robertson said she’s already seen an increase in mosquitoes and other bugs since the swampy test plot was created a few years ago.

She also worries about her children playing on a street crowded with big trucks.

Though the construction firm promises to enact strict mosquito abatement measures and route work trucks away from Keeler, locals are dubious.

“If L.A. can fix the dust, great,” Robertson said. “But if they’re going to cause more problems for us, go away.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Ebb and Flow

An early 1990s truce in the historic water war between Los Angeles and Inyo County resulted in a reduction in ground water pumped out of the Owens Valley. The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power would like to boost pumping to about 93,000 acre-feet annually, but Inyo County wants to limit it to 63,000 acre-feet.

* An acre-foot is the volume of water that would cover one acre to a depth of one foot,

which is typically the amount of water used by two households in a year.

Note: Water exports from Owens Valley include runoff captured from streams. Los Angeles

also buys water from Northern California and the Colorado River.

Source: Inyo County Water Department