LA's water and history

Richard Frank recently posted at Legal Planet on "The Latest Chapter in Los Angeles’ Century-Long Water War With the Eastern Sierra’s People & Environment". Frank begins:

There LADWP goes again.

Recently the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power announced it was walking away from its longstanding obligation to provide Mono County residents and the environment with a tiny fraction of the water it transports from Mono County to LADWP’s urban customers in Los Angeles.  When efforts by county officials to resolve the dispute informally with LADWP failed, the County sued, arguing that LADWP’s unilateral action violates California’s most iconic environmental law, the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA).  Earlier this year, a trial court agreed, ruling in the County’s favor.  The court found that LADWP’s decision to turn off the Mono County spigot without prior environmental review violates CEQA.  Now LADWP has chosen to appeal this adverse ruling to the California appellate court—where it is likely to lose again.

If LADWP’s action were an isolated incident, observers might well conclude that this is simply the latest chapter in California’s seemingly interminable water wars.  But it’s not.  To the contrary, LADWP has a sorry, 120-year history of treating the rural people and natural resources of the Eastern Sierra as a population to be exploited and an ecosystem to ravage.  Fortunately, the courts, state officials and environmental advocates have in the past repeatedly intervened to halt or moderate LADWP’s economic and environmental depredations.  Unfortunately, they need to do so again in order to stop LADWP’s announced water cutoff.

There's lots more legal history in this interesting and timely post.

Weir Pond, Eastern Sierras