After many long decades of legal battles, Los Angeles finally relinquished some of the water it sends south to thirsty Los Angeles for the Owens Valley itself...
For the first time since 1913, the lower portion of the Owens River was flowing. So how did this happen? The DWP spent millions building a pumping station just above the estuary of Owens Lake to pump the water 200'+ back into the Los Angeles Aqueduct...
LATimes
&
Owens Valley Committee
the pumping station construction site 9/2006
the 20th C. Owens River 9/2006
4 Comments
treekiller, I've read lots of little blurbs and articles on this, and I'm still confused. Can you help me understand what is going on?
Where is the water coming from that they're giving back to the river? Is Owens Lake going to get any? And from the LA Times article, it sounds like they're not really *giving* it back, they're... lending it, or something. The article makes it sound like they are going to be pumping it into that area and then taking it back out and dumping it right back into LA again. How does that help anyone? Is there a permanent plan to address this water usage issue?
the motherlode of info on the Owens River is the DWP's page on the LORP here.
Your initial impression is correct - the DWP is just letting the water flow a little further downsteam before capturing it to slake LA's thirst. Under the agreement with the owens valley stakeholders, no additional water is flowing into the Lake. There is no pending projects to refill the entire Owens Lake basin (100 square miles & over 30' deep in the 1890s). If the aquaduct was turned off today, it would take over 10 years to refill the lake.
All the water in the Owens River used to be diverted into the LA Aquaduct 62 miles north of Owens Lake. The water pictured in the river above comes from below the headgate for the Aquaduct that didn't get captured by the DWP. With the LORP (Lower Owens River Project), the headgates have been cracked open to provide a baseflow of 40 cubic feet/second to flow down to Owens Lake compared to the previous level of 3-6 cfs. Just above the delta (pictured above) is the new pumping station that re-diverts the water to the Los Angeles Aquaduct.
The value of the LORP is to restore 62 miles of riparian/aquatic habitat for wildlife and recreation. the cost is the energy needed to pump the water back up to the aquaduct. There will be no increase in water discharged into lake or for the existing 3587 acres of wetlands in the delta.
About 2 miles downstream from the pipe from the pumping station is the first of two intakes for the Owens Lake Dust Mitigation project. These pipes continue to suck water back onto the Playa to be sprayed over the surface to control dust. None of the water diverted for dust control remains potable because its mixed with highly alkaline groundwater.
The new status quo for water in the Owens Valley is a maintenance intensive engineered solution costing about $500 million and rising to restore some of the lost habitat. Unless Los Angeles/ SoCal finally discovers water conservation or looses most of the human population, water will be diverted from Owens Valley, the Colorado River and the Central Valley.
(there is lots of technical minutia that isn't worth discussing-but if you really want to know, there are 1000+ pages of EIR and other documents I can direct you to.)
No, I think I mostly grasp it now. I wouldn't understand any technical documents. :) Thank you for your excellent summary! This is so overwhelmingly sad, though... It's so odd to think of how much water is getting dumped into LA where it isn't supposed to be, changing the nature of the topography here... I think I've mentioned elsewhere how when I first moved down to Orange County in the 80s, the area was very clearly semi-arid desert--tumbleweeds blew down the road, everything was dry and grassy and dotted with very few low scrub oaks. We went through years of drought times, too. Now, my parents are noticing their first-ever HUMID summer days! It is not supposed to get humid here. Imagine how much water we're spraying around to actually create high, sticky humidity in south Orange County. Freaky!
errata- the same pipe is being used to pump back to the Aquaduct (not another pipe), there is also an intake about 10 miles downstream for the southern end of the lake's dust control (aka sulfate road)
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