The Eternal Dustbowl

Paying for the sins of L.A.�s water barons has created a half-billion-dollar boondoggle

Comments (0) By Jeffrey Anderson Wednesday, Mar 22 2006

...continued from page 6

One man whose ideas St. Amand admires is Mike Patterson, who proposed windmills to generate power to run a water-management system. Patterson wanted to pump groundwater from under the lake to create a salt-free root zone conducive to vegetation, so he could grow a marketable plant called guayule, which is used to make hypoallergenic latex rubber. Then he would divert brine water to salt ponds and harvest the minerals. St. Amand refers to Patterson as “one brilliant son of a bitch.” St. Amand has his own admirers. Great Basin’s Ted Schade says he is one of them. When asked about St. Amand’s 1986 report, Schade replies, “It’s the first thing I read on the first day on the job. We’ve always found that simple is better. But in come CH2M Hill and DWP with rocks and berms and heavy pipe and drip tubing. I’m not convinced by their high-tech solution. We wouldn’t mind seeing some new faces around here.”

A consequence of standing water or irrigated vegetation is the development of a mosquito-breeding habitat. A 1995 final report to Great Basin by Bruce Eldridge and Kenneth Lorenzen from the Department of Entomology at UC Davis is titled “Predicting Mosquito Breeding in a Restored Owens Lake.” Eldridge and Lorenzen studied Owens Lake from 1993 to 1995, according to their report, when the DWP cut off funding — but not before they warned that shallow flooding would produce larvae of Culex tarsalis, the mosquito now known to carry West Nile virus. Last September the DWP filed a declaration of no environmental impact — prepared by CH2M Hill — with the Inyo County clerk. In response to comments submitted by Patterson, the DWP offered to notify property owners of their “eligibility to receive window and door screens or other insect control devices of comparable value.”

More About

In a January 17, 2006, letter to Don Odell, Department of Health Services mosquito-control specialist Tim Howard wrote: “A case can be made that any shallow lakebed with an abundance of emergent vegetation is a very likely place to produce mosquitoes, including Culex tarsalis, and increase human risk of West Nile virus. The flooding will increase not only the potential risk of West Nile virus. Human annoyance and risk of other mosquito vectored diseases will also increase.”

Last October, the Owens Valley Mosquito Abatement Program, an Inyo County agency that is reimbursed for its studies by the DWP under the agreement with Great Basin, found evidence of Culex tarsalis on the lake for the first time. The DWP is spending $300,000 over five years for mosquito abatement, but Odell believes almost all of it goes to research and preparing the annual report. Vector-control specialist Jerry Oser says, “There’s several springs near the shoreline that produce lots of mosquitoes. What I’m seeing, wherever salt grass is growing on the lake, it shows mosquitoes a reason to go out there. There’s a lot of water out there. There’s also a lot of equipment — huge water mains with little offshoots. Who knows what it’ll look like when they’re done. It’s mind-boggling.”

DWP officials past and present blame others for the cost of the project. And despite 14 dust storms since January, according to Schade, the DWP, CH2M Hill and Great Basin defend the progress on the lake. The EPA, which defers to Great Basin as the regional air quality regulator, says only that when specified areas are covered the PM-10 standard is met for those areas. Yet no one can claim that 98 percent dust reduction is or ever will be attained.

Meanwhile, CH2M Hill is trying to rehabilitate its image. On January 13, in response to news reports regarding criticism of the project, Jack Baylis, a senior vice president with CH2M Hill, wrote to Mary Nichols, “The original cost projection of the project has been misrepresented. The program is making a difference in the air quality of the surrounding communities.”

Baylis is at least half right. The whole fiasco was set in motion in 1998 when former DWP general manager David Freeman and water manager Jerry Gewe settled with Great Basin but told the City Council the project would cost $120 million. Monday-morning commentary from a variety of sources suggests that Freeman and Gewe cut a risky deal and low-balled the cost projections to get it approved. “Freeman went up there and got taken to the cleaners,” Cahill says. “He had to sell the deal to L.A.”

Nichols, in a recent interview, called the situation at Owens Lake a disaster. “It needs to be changed.” DWP general manager Ron Deaton declined to comment. He has refused to allow his top managers to comment. When asked to comment, DWP spokesperson Carol Tucker says, “Why don’t you go ask Dave Freeman? He’s the one who got us into this.”

Freeman stands behind his decisions. “The settlement in Owens Valley was a major accomplishment of my tenure,” he told L.A. Weekly. “It resolved 80 years of fighting over water. It was over the objection of Ron Deaton. He wanted to keep fighting in court. [Great Basin] had an open-and-shut case against us. I told him the project would lead to a water-rate increase. I don’t care what anyone thinks. I cannot be held responsible for what happened later. I’m aghast at the cost. I gave us a chance to do something other than solve the problem with water. I settled the thing, hired a contractor and I was gone.”