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In Los Angeles 'water colony', tribes fear a parched future

June 4 2019

BIG PINE, California (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - When the first white settlers arrived in California’s remote eastern Owens Valley, the name given to its indigenous tribes was Paiute, or “land of flowing water” in the local language.

But for more than a century, the water in the valley has flowed in just one direction: toward Los Angeles, nearly 300 miles (480 km) away.

In the early 1900s, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) quietly bought up broad swathes of ranchland and its associated water rights in the once-lush valley, fringed by snow-capped peaks.

Today, Los Angeles owns more than a quarter million acres in Inyo County, at the valley’s heart - more than half of all land that doesn’t belong to the state or national government.

The snowmelt that once fed pear orchards and alfalfa fields gushes through an aqueduct into Los Angeles taps and swimming pools.

The aqueduct paved the way for the city’s expansion from a middling city of just over 300,000 people in 1910 to a still-mushrooming metropolis of 4 million today, historians say.

But the Owens Valley, now studded with sagebrush, “has been transformed into a desert”, said Alan Bacock, water program coordinator for the valley’s Big Pine Paiute tribe, which is struggling to access enough water to keep its economy alive.

“We’re a resource colony for Los Angeles,” he said. “We are impacted by the decisions made in Los Angeles, and really have no ability to influence those decisions.”

Meanwhile, as climate change brings harsher, more frequent droughts in California, it is bringing new threats to families on both ends of the controversial aqueduct.

The Sierra Nevada snowpack today provides 60% of California’s fresh water, serving 23 million people, according to researchers at the University of California at Los Angeles.

But the snowpack is expected to shrink more than 60% by the turn of the century if global warming continues at its current pace, they said in a 2018 report.

Already California has seen less snowmelt than average for six of the past 10 years - with unusually heavy snows in the other years, said Rich Harasick, the LADWP’s senior assistant general manager.

“It’s a real phenomenon that’s happening here, in the near term,” he said.

As the state braces for drier times, that suggests it - like much of the U.S. West - may need a rethink both of how scarce water is managed, and of the historic water rights system that gives those holding “senior” rights as much water as they like.

The American West needs rules “reflective of modern needs and desires, rather than the rules we’ve had for 150 years and have had to stick by”, said Bob Anderson, director of the Native American Law Center at the University of Washington.

“That’s the wave of the future,” he added.

WATER WEALTH

More than 150 years after losing their land to ranchers, who in turn lost it to Los Angeles, several thousand Paiute tribal members still live on a handful of reservations strung along Highway 395, the main artery through the Owens Valley.

Most - like the Big Pine tribe - effectively ceded their water rights in a 1930s land swap that gave Los Angeles the access it wanted to upstream creeks and forced the tribes to rely on an annual water allocation from the LADWP.

Just one tribe in Fort Independence refused and retained a clear water right of its own - a 14% share of Oak Creek.

Today that creek water gushes into old irrigation canals that feed the tribe’s blooming peach and pomegranate orchard.

But in a parched valley where water is effectively wealth, the flow also has kept economic development efforts afloat.

Near Oak Creek, the tribe operates a roadside travel plaza with gas pumps, a shop, casino and restaurant, and a campground.

Nearby, a small backhoe and white work trucks sit parked near the concrete foundation for a new venture - a planned drive-through cannabis shop, as well as a larger travel plaza.

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Texas Water Resources Institute
Texas Water Journal
Volume 7, Number 1, Pages 69-81