U.S. Water News Online
LOS ANGELES -- Construction has begun on a project to restore a 62-mile stretch of the Owens River, which virtually dried up when Los Angeles began diverting water from the area nearly a century ago.
The $29-million project will allow water to flow from the Los Angeles Aqueduct to the delta of Owens Lake and a segment of the river, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said.
The water should create hundreds of acres of wetlands and maintain lakes and ponds in the region 250 miles north of Los Angeles.
The aqueduct was built in 1913 to bring water from Inyo County to Los Angeles' fast-growing San Fernando Valley but the project turned the once-fertile Owens Valley into a dust bowl. The events were fictionalized in the 1974 movie "Chinatown."
Excessive groundwater pumping destroyed some 100 acres of the Owens Valley between 1970 and 1990. In 1997, the Los Angeles Department of Water & Power agreed to create a natural habitat in the Owens Valley by 2003 but missed the deadline, prompting a lawsuit.
Last year, following more than three decades of litigation, an Inyo County judge ordered the Department of Water & Power to either act on repeated court orders to restore the Lower Owens River or stop pumping water from it.
The DWP has received the project's final permit from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the mayor's office said.
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