Telegraphs and newly constructed railroad lines are suspended. Hundreds are suddenly left homeless. Many others face financial ruin. The year will be the wettest on record, as one storm after another pounds the region until May. The Los Angeles River becomes so engorged, it splits into two, with one flowing west down Ballona Creek, the other heading south and merging with the Rio Hondo and San Gabriel rivers in one muddy torrent.
The storms convince LA County to begin its first flood control project, a levee on the west bank of the river. The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors takes action, hiring a team of engineers to devise a flood control strategy for the region. But their report is largely ignored, thanks to a drought that quells enthusiasm for flood control. The toll of a rapidly growing population in an arid climate, combined with frequent and costly floods, becomes the impetus for building the early infrastructure of our modern-day water system.
Gradually, imported water becomes integral to our water supply and to the health of our groundwater basins. Ultimately, major flooding in the 19th and 20th centuries makes the construction of a complex flood control system in LA County critical to its future. By , half a million people live in the county, nearly five times as many as in two decades prior. The nearest water supply is all the way in the Owens Valley, some miles to the northeast of LA County — a long haul to be sure, but, crucially, mostly a downhill journey, which means that Mulholland can design an aqueduct that will carry the water using nothing but the force of gravity.
Approved in and completed in , the mile Los Angeles Aqueduct is an engineering marvel one that remains operational to this day. LA County is now home to over half a million people. Griffith is making movies in the newly-annexed neighborhood of Hollywood. The streets are filled with cars. But water, so scarce in recent years, remains a looming threat to the burgeoning region. Following years of drought, another flood hits the region. More than homes are lost and at least three people die.
By the s, there are over two million people living in Los Angeles County. The project employs roughly 30, people and is later declared one of the Seven Engineering Wonders of American Engineering by the American Society of Civil Engineers. Completed in , operational in , the aqueduct gives California 1.
On March 1, a second, more powerful storm hits the region with at least 10 more inches of rain. They begin lowering, widening, and encasing entire channels of the Los Angeles and San Gabriel Rivers in concrete.
This work in the wake of the flood to channelize local river, construct dams, and build debris basins proves instrumental to preventing catastrophe in and when river volume exceeds those of the flood. Southern California must address an urgent problem — the need to replenish groundwater basins. Groundwater had become a critical source of water for both drinking water and irrigating farmland.
While strict laws exist for how much surface water — water from local rivers or constructed aqueducts — you can rightfully use, there are no such laws regulating how much water you can take from underground sources. A growing population, increased demand, and little knowledge about how much water lies beneath the surface results in years of over-pumping. Some local groundwater wells go dry.
In the search for more fresh water, others are dug so deep that ocean water begins slowly seeping into the groundwater basins — making the water undrinkable and unable to irrigate land. The problem is compounded by the fact that the basins have become harder to replenish. In the past, rainwater would flow through the mountains and seep into the ground into a groundwater basin. The proliferation of pavement in a rapidly urbanizing LA County greatly reduces organic groundwater replenishment and necessitates a new strategy to intentionally replenish these underground water sources.
In , voters approve the establishment of the Water Replenishment District to manage and protect groundwater. Recycled water starts to be routinely used to recharge groundwater basins and the Flood Control District dispatches a complex system to capture stormwater so it can be used to help with recharge.
Twenty-two years after they began, workers have moved 20 million cubic yards of earth, poured 3. Some entities, like the Army Corps of Engineers and the LA Times, regularly refer to them as flood control channels instead of rivers. They are designed to carry water as quickly and as efficiently as possible from the mountains to the sea. These soft-bottom sections will, in time, provide the venues for the rediscovering of the river. The project will create one of the largest public water and power utilities in the world, building a network of aqueducts, pumping stations and power plants over hundreds of miles across California.
Construction begins in and takes decades to complete. It will eventually become the 1 consumer of power in the State of California and comprise 21 dams including the Oroville Dam , 34 reservoirs and more than miles of canals, pipelines and tunnels.
Its purpose: take water from Northern California rivers, where water is plentiful, pump it thousands of feet high over the Tehachapi Mountains and deliver it to the comparatively arid Central Valley and booming Southern California region.
Today, the SWP provides water to irrigate , acres of farmland in California, and provides two-thirds of Californians some portion of their drinking water. The SWP continues to expand as regulators weigh the need for more capacity with trying to mitigate ecological damage from water withdrawals in Northern California. In the 21st Century, LA County is stepping up efforts to grow our local water sources through emerging technologies and improved infrastructure which will increase our capacity to capture and use stormwater, decrease water pollution, and open the door to the use of converted ocean water.
Of critical importance is the need to balance diverse and sustainable water sources with programs that improve the efficiency of water use and encourage conservation of water resources. Among other devastating environmental effects, the drought kills million trees; 62 million of them die in alone.
Though the drought finally ends in , scientists predict more dry stretches in the years to come, thanks in part to climate change. The effort will provide a comprehensive plan to transform the entire LA River, including infrastructure upgrades, community green space, and water quality enhancements. Facing the threat of continued climate change, LA County continues to adapt its water system.
Water falls differently than it did years ago — more rain falls in increasingly short periods, followed by long stretches with no rain at all. This, combined with our increasing population, deepens the strain on our water sources while our water infrastructure has become vulnerable to rising sea levels, extreme floods increased pollution, and the potential for earthquakes.
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Intro s s s Now. Los Angeles, it has been said, is an odd place for a big metropolis. That struggle, more than any other, is the story of LA County. Vista de puebla de Los Angeles, Library of Congress. View of Los Angeles Plaza, USC Digital Library.
A scene of the starvation of cattle in the summer of during the great drought. Overturned Street Car, Downey Avenue, California State Library. View of Highland Park, If someone asked you where you get your water, would you know how it got to your faucet or sprinkler?
Water travels a long distance before arriving to individual users. Understanding the sources and the routes it takes to reach your home is key to understanding the state of water in Los Angeles. This represents only about one-third of Los Angeles' water supply. When rain falls in the winter at higher elevations, it becomes snow. When that snow melts in the springtime, the melted water becomes runoff and flows into aqueducts and groundwater.
The Colorado River Aqueduct can deliver 1 billion gallons of water per day to cities in Southern California. In order to conserve the Sierras snowpack, more water is being imported from the Colorado River.
The use of groundwater is dependent on location: some areas have easy access to groundwater, while others rely on surface or imported water. In the city of Los Angeles, groundwater represents close to one-tenth of the water supply.
Seventy-percent of the city's water supply once flowed through the Los Angeles Aqueduct. Climate, for one, is a major culprit. This represents a significant issue regarding infrastructure. The river was restructured as a drainage system; water that was once useable began to be diverted into the ocean and the city lost a source of its drinking water.
Another reason that our sources are running low is due to water leaks and evaporation in the water transport system.
When water moves from the Colorado River or the Sierras, through an aqueduct to Southern California, water can leak out of the aqueduct into the ground or is simply evaporated. A significant amount of water can be lost in the water delivery systems. A large residential population has also stressed the water supply. Droughts are cyclical.
Southern California last experienced one in that lasted for six years, while others in the distant past have lasted much longer. Understanding where our water comes from and where it is going is an important step in understanding how to survive drought years. Special microbes purify the water by consuming the waste particles and transforming them into energy in the form of methane gas. The gas is then consumed by microbial fuel cells that produce electricity. Imagine the entire city of Los Angeles with a population of approximately 3.
Since the process produces energy in the form of gas that is later converted to electricity, Los Angeles could essentially run entirely on its own waste as a self sustaining ecosystem with a renewable energy source! This same water filtration technology can be effectively implemented in third world countries, giving them access to an essentially endless supply of fresh water and energy.
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