A long, dry wait is nearly over for the Owens River
The DWP says water will resume flowing Dec. 6, a boon for wildlife and tourism.
By Louis Sahagun, Times Staff Writer
November 27, 2006
Nearly a century after Los Angeles’ water demands reduced it to a parched wisp of a river, a 62-mile-stretch of the Lower Owens is about to make a comeback in one of the most ambitious river restoration efforts ever attempted.
The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, fulfilling a long-delayed commitment, plans to put water back into the river on Dec. 6 in hopes of transforming its puddles and ponds into a biological superhighway of trees, fish, waterfowl, songbirds, elk and deer.
With the push of a button, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is to open the clamshell-shaped jaws of a specially constructed automated steel gate about 235 miles north of the city, replenishing the river with its first appreciable flows of water since 1913.
“Let the water flow, baby,” said Villaraigosa. “This is an unprecedented commitment on the part of our city to improving the environment and signifies a rebirth and renewal of an important resource.”
The Owens River, fed by Sierra runoff, flows for about 100 miles before reaching the spot where the Dec. 6 ceremony will take place.
Most river water will continue to stream into the intake of the Los Angeles Aqueduct; some will pour through the steel gate and into the river channel.
The redirected water will surge 62 miles south to new storage ponds at the north end of dry Owens Lake. There, four newly installed 600-horsepower pumps will lift it and send it into the aqueduct and on its way to Southern California.
The river project will not restore the lake. Because water is being returned to the aqueduct, the project is not expected to affect Los Angeles’ water supply nor add additional costs to consumers.
Owens Valley residents say it can’t happen soon enough.
Business leaders believe the revived river will attract more tourists to the struggling towns that dot the valley, which runs between the 14,000-foot-elevation walls of the Sierra Nevada and the White-Inyo Mountains.
“Inyo County is in bad shape financially,” said Kathleen New, Lone Pine Chamber of Commerce president. “So we plan to get very creative with our marketing programs to maximize what happens on the Lower Owens from here on out.
”After all,“ she added, ”where else can you see wild mink and yellow-billed cuckoos?“
Sports enthusiasts and environmentalists are already drafting guide maps for miles of hiking trails, bird-watching hot spots, bass-fishing tournaments and a kayaking experience they are calling the ”the long glide“ because the river’s carefully controlled flows will be free of rapids and waterfalls.
The renewed river is to flow year-round and, depending on the width of the channel, range in depth from 2 to 4 feet. It generally will drift along at slightly less than 1 mph, about the speed of a leisurely stroll. It will pick up the pace in steeper, deeper narrows.
Today, the river channel exists as a series of seasonally flooded pastures and murky shallow ponds fed by springs and agricultural runoff. Most are choked with cattails. Scattered clumps of cottonwoods clinging to shoulders of land are all that remain of once robust stream-side forests.
To enrich the habitat, the DWP plans to match hydraulics with climate and vegetation cycles to create a permanent annual base flow of 40 cubic feet per second that will surge when trees are pumping out seeds.
With a goal of helping more water push through habitat areas, the DWP has already replaced or repaired small spill gates, reshaped old ditches that feed water to wetlands and removed obstructions, including beaver dams.
If all goes according to plan, within five years the river will be an oasis for wild things, featuring a rich warm-water habitat for fish, crawfish and frogs, edged by galleries of cottonwood, willow and birch trees up to 25 feet tall, according to DWP stream ecologist Brian Tillemans.
Standing on the intake’s catwalk overlooking the start of the Lower Owens channel, Tillemans said, ”The water released on Dec. 6 will take roughly 19 days to reach the northern end of dry Owens Lake.
“After that,” he said, “it won’t take too long before the river finds its own way again and we see a die-off of desert shrubs, such as salt brush and rabbit brush, which can’t handle a high water table.”
Officials have no plans to stock the river with fish. They say the bass, catfish and bluegill already in the ponds are expected to multiply once they are loose in the channel, and other animals will find their way to the river as a forest and meadows sprout up along its length.
Barring unforeseen glitches, Richard Cervantes, an Inyo County supervisor, is looking forward to excellent bass and catfish fishing.
At sunup on a recent frosty weekday morning, Cervantes, 71, strode to a favorite fishing hole beside the crumbling ruins of a train trestle that served the region back when the surrounding hills were crawling with prospectors.
Casting a streamer into a murky pond, he smiled and said, “All the ugly things going on in the world don’t really matter much when you’re out here fishing on the wild side of California.
”The benefits people are going to get from a healthy river running through these wide-open vistas will be good for the spirit and the soul,“ he said. ”No matter where you go, you won’t find any signs that say, ‘Keep out.’ “
Los Angeles’ unquenchable thirst has been hard on the Owens Valley, where residents still grumble about how, in the early 1900s, the city used agents to pose as farmers and ranchers to buy land and water rights in the valley. The city then built dams, diversions and groundwater pumps that starved local springs and wetlands, turning the 110-square-mile Owens Lake into an acrid dust bowl.
The Los Angeles Aqueduct and the so-called Second Los Angeles Aqueduct, built here in 1970, deliver about 430 million gallons of water a day to the city.
The DWP has a long history of delays in correcting the environmental damage it has caused in the valley. In previous long legal battles in the Eastern Sierra, the agency had to give up significant amounts of water to stabilize water levels in Mono Lake and to re-water parts of Owens Lake to reduce dust storms.
Three weeks ago, the DWP announced a proposed agreement to spend $105 million on berms to reduce dust pollution from the Owens Lake bed.
The DWP contends that the restoration of the Lower Owens marks the start of a new era of cooperation between the city and valley communities. The agency is one of the region’s largest employers and a resource for cattle ranchers, who lease most of the 300,000 acres DWP controls here for pasture.
Some Owens Valley residents, however, were cautious in their optimism about the project.
”All is not instantly rosy,“ said Benett Kessler, owner of KDAY-FM radio in Bishop and an investigative journalist who has been publicly critical of the DWP since 1975. She noted that the DWP missed several court-imposed deadlines to finish the river restoration project.
”The mayor wants us to believe that Los Angeles is the most environmentally sensitive city in the West,“ she said. ”But how can you call it environmentally sensitive if it takes a court order for it to do anything positive?
“Considering the DWP’s track record,” she added, “I think we have to see them in action before we come to any conclusions.”
The last line says it all.
We’re all still on for Saturday?
Fuzzle.
Meantime, Beverly Hills goes, “Oh yeah that subway thing!”
As far as I know, Saturday’s still good. I have a bad feeling the site is on 24/7 now, so I may have a 12 hour shift instead of the usual 10, but I won’t know for certain until tomorrow afternoon. Will advise asap.
kirsten drunkst grazed my leg at a bar in silverlake this weekend
i also saw donovan leitch and his wife Kirsty Hume and baby. also a few lesser knowns like alexandra holden (friends) and Craig Bierko
i’m still on.
Refresh my (apparently non-existent) memory—what time, where, dress code, how much alcohol will be available?
i’d try and make it if it’s cool. ditto above(?)
Hahaha! Ice in Seattle = today’s flight cancelled :) I’ll be down there tomorrow though.
hooray!
SICK
Sweet drunkery.
Youn, are you back in town?
it’s been freezing here these past few days! if this is winter in l.a., i want my money back.
red lion is fun but Lowenbrau Keller is the craziest German restaurant in town, go there while it still exists
wait, who are you?
guys, i no longer live in my car.
also, don’t sleep outside on venice beach.
This is why you no longer live in your car, I assume.
wow yikes
Oh yay, I’m back in LA. And not on 12 hour days til next week, so will be able to get to the Saturday fap at a reasonable hour.
Ah yes? Hmm. Drop me a line about plans, then!
gear to thread – and drop me an email (i lost your address and have a question)
Actually, Remy, plz check yer e-mail as well.
Jaq’s let me know, sadly, that she might not be able to make it to the FAP, but I’ll be along for it of course.
No word at the end of the day what the hell is up with my work schedule. I really don’t want to go on 12 hour days, and I really really don’t want to go on nights, and I really really really want to come to JBR’s birthday fap.
Call in mysteriously sick for a day. Perhaps.
If only. I spent a considerable amount of time today willing the genset to throw one of its mysterious fits, but I won’t know until tomorrow morning if it worked :)
It worked. Ned, check yr email.
Rock.
Quick note to everyone — I’m feeling a bit under the weather at present and may not be able to make it. More later.
Call in mysteriously sick for a day.
— Ned Raggett (ne...), Yesterday.
Quick note to everyone — I’m feeling a bit under the weather at present and may not be able to make it. More later.
— Ned Raggett (ne...), Today
O RLY?
I’m hors de combat with whatever’s going around as well, but going to try to rally.
weaklings!
if yer strong enuff to post, yer strong enuff to fap
weaklings!
Things not to do on a Friday night — be stuck in an emergency room for six hours.
you okay now?
JBR, chk yr email?
Will there be any good music shows between December 16 and December 29? I’m thinking of going to see the Blank Tapes in Costa Mesa on the 21st. They’ll also play in NYC before that.
happy bday again jbr, sry I missed the shindig.
you okay now?
yes?
dudes i planned on going but i totally forgot, no good excuse really. ; (
Ya punk. (And yes I am okay now.)
I may have shown up for this one too but I also had a touch of a cold, plus I’m going to Norway again Monday and thought I should prepare/rest up. Happy birthday Jody.
guys, I have the stomach flu :(
weakling
haha, barf.
i’m sick too.
so much for that daily multivitamin!
Maybe I *shouldn’t’ve* visited y’all on Saturday.
I have the stomach flu
:-( Glad it’s not a cabbage ‘n beer allergy, though. Hope you’re all feeling better soon.
NOT SICK. U GUYS SHOULD HAVE GOT DRUNKER.
was on the way when the cabbage/flu cabal staged a coup :(
i’m not flulike or nuthin, i just have some chest congestion.
i have weird recurring fever + finals anxiety, both of which i will now cure with pot.
Ugh, I had some sort of stomach bug last week. Only lasted a day and a half, though. Sorry I missed the FAP and happy birthday, JBR. It would have been nice to hoist a few in honor of Mariska “Was a Good Old Girl” Veres with some people who feel the same as I do about her. Anyway, hope you all feel better.
Someday I’ll see you all again! Anyone hear from Vic? I know he was gonna be really busy with his film for a few months.
i’m drinking for mariska tonight, arthur.
Vic actually wrote me in response to my myspace blog about my Friday hospital stint — film’s finished and is to be premiered in June or July, I think.
i saw Steve-O this weekend. he looked rather normal
Does anyone know where I can find a self-service drive-thru car wash in LA? I went through one in Northern California a few weeks ago and it was just delightful. As far as self-service car washes go, all I ever see in LA are the park ’n’ brush ’n’ spray ones.
I’ve been looking for someplace to get the giant work pickup cleaned and found this page of LA car wash reviews! Has all kinds of different types listed but several automatic ones.
i think there’s a self-service one on santa monica blvd between vine and cahuenga, and there might be a couple others in the area. another one on santa monica blvd near gardner, i think? could be wrong.
Does anyone know of a southern California carwash in the form of a castle? It’s somewhere near the beach.
which beach?
I don’t know, that’s why I ask. I went there over 10 years ago but I can’t remember where I was. It was somewhere in between Santa Barbara and San Diego but not between say Malibu and LAX. I have had a vague memory of this place for years and the carwash question suddenly reminded me.
As for self-service drive through carwashes, the only ones I have seen in the LA area have been at gas stations. I want to say they’re mostly at Mobile stations but that might not be accurate. There might be one at the station on the corner where the 101 crosses Sunset. And I know there are some others way out in the valley. They are pretty uncommon though.
Aha, google to the rescue! I know I searched for this a few years ago and couldn’t find and answer but here it is. The Castle Car Wash in Long Beach.
http://www.roadsidepeek.com/roadusa/southwest/california/socal/socalauto/socalcarwash/
Also a list of self-serve drive-throughs...
xpost Chevron was the chain that had the drive thrus, a Pasadena one has it but don’t know if it’s actually working.
shells and mobils have drive throughs too, bro.
Thanks for the tips and links, everyone. I didn’t realize there were so many nearby (I live in Highland Park). I guess I always thought the ones attached to the gas stations weren’t self-service.
i misunderstood i thought you meant the park n spray ones. yeah the drive thru ones are everywhere.
CARWASHING! Eat that water conservationists and public transportation advocates!
not all drive-through spots are self service though xpost
CARWASHING! Eat that water conservationists and public transportation advocates!
i’m both of these! but we used to go through the drive-thru car wash a lot when i was little and we lived near one, and it was awesome and fascinating.
i don’t think i’ve ever washed a car i’ve owned.
WANT: huell howser egg nog
Anybody?
also, one of the djs’ names looks oddly familiar...
omg, SF’s own hipster dj richie panic!
Maybe Spencer needs the Lionel Ritchie sculpture for this???
Is it ILX you’re spinning for?
I have nothing to do with that event. I just happened to see it posted on MySpace. BTW, did Spencer stop posting? I remember him having a good presence here when I first started lurking.
I think it was actually an LA thread that drove him away was it not?
he still posts occasionally (i haven’t seen him on the sandbox tho)
posting info about tomorrow here since regular ilx is down:
join us for lunch tomorrow, february 17, at taste of brazil in el sereno (on huntington drive near eastern avenue). transit riders can take the 78/79/378 or the 256. routes and times are on the mta website. we’re aiming for a 2pm start time.
after lunch we’re going to pasadena to check up on ilxor BLAM at his notorious mccormick & schmick’s bartending shift, fabled in story and song. that’ll be sometime around 4pm. mccormick & schmick is at 111 n. los robles, near union st. walkable from the memorial park gold line station.
maybe some of you would be into this. i dj with another dude as acid girls.
I RSVPed, so there’s a chance I might go. My GF went to the Blow Up LA party and said it was fun.
If the Acid Girls dudes were who I thought they were at Switch on Tuesday night (the first guys to go on, right?) then I would completely go to this, if only to hear whatever the fuck that ridiculous banger of a track that went right after that LCD Soundsystem song was again. (unfortunately I have plans for the night already—I should probably make more of an effort to see AG out in Costa Mesa or whatever far-flung location y’all call yr homebase anyway.)
My only other option tonight is standing in line at The Echo for two hours as the inept door staff shoots the shit with each other instead of letting people into the club. Jerry from Devo is DJing. Or I guess I could stay in the IE (but no).
playing a party tonight in beachwood cyn for famous bass players bday open bar hit me up if any ilxors wana go!
that’s an awesome poster! if you go lemme know what jerry plays.
‘blow up’ was fun. I’m home already cuz I’m old. taste of brazil was good and blammage iwth jbr and ned and elvis is fun!
and nickn too sorry. roxor
I didn’t go to either of those clubs because I suck and all my friends wanted me to go to some garage-punk festival at Mr. T’s Bowl in Highland Park. Only caught two bands but one of them was The Flakes and they totally made the night worth it.
the chairs of perception (new incarnation of urinals/100 flowers) and the last (’84 edition) are playing early sunday night at safari sam’s on sunset east of western. both are tight, lean, and hungry. i’ll see everyone there!
I was going to hit BlowUp, but was too tired. Acid Girls are highly recommended!
Also, I tend to play a baltimore club remix of Lionel Richie (The Commodores) “Easy”. I might have to do my own edit of “Hello”.
naus did you see knights of the new crusade? they played at my school on friday and then were going to mr. t’s bowl last night. they do fake christian rock, dress up in chain mail, wave a big sword? theyre awesome.
That was one of the bands that I wanted to see but missed :(
yeah—i got to spend a little bit of time with them and theyre sweet doodz. good choons, too.
hi spencer!
Hi JBR!
Hello to all. Sleeping in this morning was a fine thing.
sundays! i drove to san diego yesterday and i forgot how much i hate long weekend traffic. 7 hours driving, total, plus 6 major accidents along the way.
i’m sad i missed stuff. i did make it out that night for john wiese!!! and captain ahab, who were... wow. fun times. happy three-day weekend everyone!
hehe why did i think coffee and whiskey was a good idea?
I would totally like to see BLAM’s document of last night’s shift.
Please?
BLAM mentioned to me in e-mail he is having login problems! :-(
jbr—or any other urban planningites — got any thoughts on this story? Reads like a dumb hit piece to this layman, just wondering if you have more info or dealings with the org in question and how effectual it actually is.
i have no thoughts on this story. zu^^@ d066 + kotkin = la la la not listening.
The movie Los Angeles Plays Itself is showing at the Aero in Santa Monica Friday and Saturday. It’s well worth seeing and doesn’t play too often. And may never be released on DVD because I take it the clips were used largely without permission.
My hotel is in a weird location and I don’t think there’s anything fun nearby but maybe that’s ok because two hours of sleep last night plus jetlag = no motivation.
if you have questions shoot away
Maybe moot now bc i have a lot of hw tonight for work stuff tomorrow and then I’m stupid busy, but I’m by usc and it seems lame.
yeah usc is pretty close to dtla but the immediate area is college campus and much else
went walking in search of dinner and it was all fast food :(
yeah there’s an old school greasy spoon in that hood but i don’t have specifics
let me know if you are looking for a downtown cocktail joint
Maybe for Friday night if I can get out of any work obligations!
once again we were in the same city but a couple of weeks apart : (