How Los Angeles Got Its Water

San Francisco was the first big metropolis on the American West Coast, but once the westward migration got going, Los Angeles was not far behind.

The U.S. census of 1890 counted about 50,000 people in LA.  By 1900, the population had doubled to 102,500.  Ten years later, in 1910, the population had more than tripled to 319,000.

As in San Francisco, water was a problem.  The Los Angeles River was estimated toward the end of the 19th century to be able to support a population of 250,000, but city fathers expected much greater growth.

Like San Francisco, Los Angeles found its water from land to the east.

Around 1900, prominent Angelenos began buying up property in the Owens Valley, on the other side of the Sierra Nevada, near the state border with Nevada.  What they sought, and received, were water rights to to the Owens River, which was fed by snowmelt from the mountains.

The city put a proposed bond measure in front of Los Angeles voters to build a Los Angeles Aqueduct, 233 miles long, to bring Owens River water into LA.  The measure passed.

Here are some Los Angeles Department of Water and Power historical photos of the construction and the opening of the aqueduct in 1913.

Los Angeles Aqueduct Opens, 1913

This provided a lot of water, but Los Angeles kept expanding its boundaries and attracting new residents, to a total of 577,000 in 1920 and more than double that, 1.23 million in 1930.   More water was needed.

In 1931, California voters approved a bond measure for an even bigger project, the Colorado Aqueduct.  A new state agency, the Metropolitan Water District, organized the 242-mile project that also created Lake Havasu and the Parker Dam.  The Colorado Aqueduct water accommodated further population growth as far as San Diego and also supplied irrigation for the state's large agriculture economy.

Other projects, including Hoover Dam, also drew from the Colorado River.  Today the Colorado supplies water for 40 million people in seven states from Wyoming to California.

The National Aeronautic and Space Administration has documented a serious depletion of groundwater beneath the Colorado River between 2004 and 2013.  Similar groundwater depletion has been noted also in California, especially since the recent drought began several years ago and farmers pulled more water out of wells to protect thirsty crops.

Over the last 90 years, the size of the Colorado River Delta, which empties into the Gulf of California, has dropped from 3,000 square miles to 250 square miles, causing harm to sea life.

Back in the Owens Valley, groundwater also is being pumped at levels that scientists say are unsustainable.  Heavy dust storms in parts of the valley in recent years have blown tiny particulates at 100 times the EPA recommended maximum.

California has been resourceful in diverting water from the dry interior to its coastal cities.  But as the state enters its fourth drought year, there is no new water source to tap.  Reservoirs are low, and water restrictions for farms and cities are expected to get tougher as the state draws down further its diminished store of water to get through the crisis.

In the middle of the country, the Ogalala Acquifer, a great underground sink running from Texas to South Dakota that accumulated rainwater over thousands of years, is being drawn down rapidly and not replenished.   More dry decades may be the future; scientists calculate that, even with the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, the 20th century was the Midwest's rainiest for thousands of years.

This is not just an American story.  World populations are battling with water scarcity.

More on that in a later post.

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