>> I have no apologies. I was a crusader for the development of water. I was the
Messiah! I was the evangelist that went out and argued persuasively to develop
our rivers and water supplies for the benefit of the people.
>> In the American desert, we have built a great new civilization in less than a
century. Where none could possibly be in the natural order of things. We have
made the land wet where it was dry and dry where it was wet. We have lifted
great rivers out of their ancient beds and moved them over half a continent. Our
great cities stand in a desert that is drier than the plains of North Africa. It
would all be impossible without the breathtaking manipulation of water. We
fought over water, thrived on water, and finally we engineered the desert out of
existence.>> Next to God, there's water.>> Everybody is conscious of water. If
you head for the river with a bucket-- an empty bucket, you are liable to get
shot.>> Can you imagine today in American city acquiring an entire river?
>> The idea of subduing nature has captivated the whole country.
>> Congress cannot appropriate enough money fast enough to build more dams.
>> We built the dams for all the right reasons when they were desperately needed
with little thought to the consequences. The developing world watched and envied
our success.>> The engineering marvel that is inaudible dam inspected by Emperor
Haile Selassie of Ethiopia.>> Supplying water to the population growing that
fast is extremely difficult.>> It's a little bit like the sorcerer's
apprentice. You've got to have more water, more water, more water.
>> They are going to dam this canyon.>> There is no end to these people who had
plans to dam San Francisco Bay,pipelines beyond your wildest dreams. This wasn't
about curing oil. This was about carrying water.>> We have forgotten that the
natural West is barren and fatally dry. And that our new bountiful West is a
fragile construction. Here and there are reminders
of what happens when the water is turned off. Or when the water works fail.
>> Somehow the water stopped flowing. You have a desert again overnight.
>> The dam's gone.>> The whole thing is gone now?
>> The whole thing is gone. It rolled over about five minutes ago.
>> Okay.>> If you can give us any help on radio or whatnot get the people
started there out.>> All right. Where do you want the people evacuated?
>> Well, we would like to get them off the river in low-lying inaudible
>> Well, it's 6:22 at 710 Talk KMPC, I'm Dominic with Air Watch Traffic and I've
got to tell you the jackknifed big rig in Pasadena has the 210 eastbound in
trouble right at Rosemead where the right three lanes are out of commission, the
jackknifed big rig there and about a quarter-mile slow. On the westbound side
almost across the fence from it right at Sierra Madre. Right lane is blocked to
the inaudible so get ready it's slow from the 605 and how are things in Orange
County?>> Hey, Scott! inaudible>> -- in Ronald Reagan Freeway on the west
inaudible Reseda Boulevard inaudible Foreign Language Spoken
>> A car that spun out and hit the center divider and the two left lanes are
protected by CHP vehicles.>> Use alternate routes such as Laurel Canyon or even
Mulholland today.>> I think my grandfather has a vision with the city like
Dublin. Which was the city of his childhood. And it was a vision I think of a
19th century city. Where people ambled on streets and a new one another and
enjoyed the theater and the opera and the University. A civilized 19th century
city.>> No other Buick dealership in California has been best in its class for
seven years. That's because no other Buick dealership has sold more than 10,000
Buicks in the last 10 years. The list goes on and on. Right now we have lots of
traffic to talk about, too. First of all the KABC traffic alert--
>> The thing that you have to remember about Los Angeles is that it never really
had a reason to be there. It had no minerals, no metals, no forests, and other
words, everything that any major American city used to develop itself, LA
lacked. And above all it lacked water.>> Since the beginning of time this was a
place of earthquakes and perpetual drought. First claimed by the Spaniards, and
then conquered by the Americans.Virtually everyone here had come from somewhere
else. In 1878 William Mulholland arrived from the Green Hills of Ireland. He had
stowed away on a sailing ship worked as a lumberjack failed as a gold miner and
had walked across Panama to save $25 and train fare. He was fond of one armed
chin-ups and grand Opera.Mulholland found work as a ditch digger on the growing
town's dilapidated water system.>> LA was desperate to become a modern city. It
had been a backwater for so many decades.>> But its water system, on the other
hand, was pretty much the same old Jerry built thing. A bunch of old
waterwheels. The falling apart system.>> He worked hard, read Shakespeare, and
hydraulic engineering late into the night. Taught himself to keep the entire LA
water system in his head and climbed through the ranks. In 1886 when his boss
suddenly dropped dead, William Mulholland found himself superintendent of the LA
water system. The little desert Pueblo had grown to 100,000 people thanks to the
Chamber of Commerce and a new railroad. And by 1903 LA had sucked dry the tiny
Los Angeles River. It's only source of water.>> My mother would tell me these
stories of growing up without water. One bath a week on Saturday night and I
washed in a big zinc tub that was dragged into the
kitchen and water heated and Poppa got the first bath, mama got the second and
the kids-- mother told me you know they were not what you would call white trash
but she told me she never had a bath in pure clean water. Now I was raised with
a real sense that water was a precious item and not to be squandered.
>> Superintendent Mulholland tried to make Los Angeles live within its means.
But growth sabotaged everything he did. By 1903, the chief knew that LA would
have to stop growing or he would have to find a new source of water. His friend,
Mayor Fred Eaton and told him of a great Valley 200 miles to the north.
Pomacentrus phonetic Paiutes had lived along the Owens River. White settlers who
colonized Owens Valley found Paiutes irrigating natural grasses with several
miles of small irrigation canals.>> My grandmother told my only sister that when
the whites came they started to push the Indians up into the rocky places where
the water was scarce because they wanted the other for their cattle and things.
And they came in and they fenced everything up. They start saying if you want to
use my water, you have to have special permission and the Indians always let the
water run. It was never something that belonged to one individual person. It
belonged to the whole community.>> By 1904, settlers from New England,
Switzerland, and Scotland had taken the Indians land, established farms in a
dozen towns and a steamboat service on the age old Owens Lake. They dug and
elaborate irrigation system diverting the Owens River into hundreds of miles of
ditches. Former Mayor Fred Eaton convinced Mulholland to set out northward
across the Mojave Desert in the fall of 1904 toward Owens Valley.
>> They went by Buck boy phonetic which was the only way you can go it took them
about two weeks to get there. I think there was a trail of whiskey bottles all
the way out.>> In two weeks, Mulholland and Eaton were on the banks of the Owens
River.>> At certain times of the year, in what years, anyway, you can get a
little glimpse of what the river must've been like then and how it must have
impressed Mulholland. The Owens Valley is one of the most dramatic places in the
world.You have on the one side the Sierra Nevada, virtually every mountain over
14,000 feet, and then you have a drop of 2 miles to the valley floor and then a
rise of almost 2 miles up to the White Mountain range. Because the mountains
stop virtually all weather, it is in the rain-- and there is no rain in the
Owens Valley. It is a true desert looking up onto huge snow-covered peaks. And
through the middle of it comes what you almost could call a-- Mississippi River
given the setting. It is so improbable in this harsh desert to see River that
used to be as engorged-- And not only was this river that could take care of the
next 20, 30, probably inaudible 50 years of population growth in LA but it could
flow all the way by gravity.Inaudible>> -- so full of enthusiasm he said you
know I've seen something here-- water that will last us into the next century.
>> And I think Mulholland suddenly must have changed and he saw himself as a
sort of a builder of a Roman masterwork as somebody who kept a great hydraulic
engineering tradition alive. I can't tell you what went through his head, but
suddenly he was a convert. Having been more of an efficiency guy and a
conservationist, suddenly he became an empire builder almost overnight.
>> And now, they were going to capture a river. The only River that kind of
accidentally flowed through this desert and they were going to move the whole
river across this 200-plus miles of terrain that they just covered at some risk
probably to their lives.>> The problem facing Mulholland was at the river was
owned. All the water rights were owned by farmers who were irrigating something
like 60,000 acres.This was a thriving agricultural area at the time and it was
being further developed by the Bureau of reclamation. Now how in the world were
you going to arrest that water away from these farmers and the federal
government? That was the dilemma.>> Can you imagine today and American city
acquiring an entire River for its future? Of course. It goes without saying. It
could be done but it was done then.>> inaudible his ages for a federal project
meant to irrigate Owens Valley Holland's men went to the county courthouse.
There they convinced clerks to show them these, maps, and records the stream
flows. Within days, Eaton was quietly buying property and water rights.
Inaudible-- to a local irrigation project but to the city of Los Angeles.
Without telling Mulholland, former Mayor Fred Eaton about the only dam site in
Owens Valley for himself.>> Once the city knew who had the best water rights and
who was likeliest to sell those rights, it was basically a done deal.
>> It didn't take very long for them to capture most of that river.
>> Two people who had ultimately benefited and who knew the whole story of this
scheme were the publishers of the Los Angeles times. Harrison Gray Otis and
Harry Chandler. They were the big promoters and boosters but they were sworn to
secrecy as this was going on. They did not let the cat out of the bag until they
couldn't help themselves and finally under a headline that said Titanic project
to give the city River they talked about how the whole thing had gone. And you
know when you read that today and imagine a major city newspaper just kind of
gloating over the triumph of you know it's artifice and chicanery, it makes you
real in a sense. But that was what Los Angeles was like in those days. It was--
the climate was one of just getting what you want any way you can get it.
>> The Owens Valley paper saw the future differently. The still secret aqueduct
route would pass through the San Fernando Valley on its way to LA. And someone
was buying up near worthless land in the San Fernando. Now, another cat out of
the bag. It was a real estate syndicate that would make millions of Owens River
water irrigated their newly acquired San Fernando Valley land.
>> What was happening all the while these water rights in the Owens Valley were
being acquired was that the San Fernando Valley is being bought up by a
syndicate of people who represented the power structure of Los Angeles with the
kind of exquisite sense of proportion.>> I suppose you could make a case for
this being this incestuous cabal of hidden you know Jonathan inaudible
California inaudible oligarchy. Old boys' wasp network-- no Jews, darks,
Blacks, Mexicans allowed.>> Quietly, the entire San Fernando Valley was bought
up by the arch capitalists of Los Angeles for the purpose of irrigating it when
the Owens River finally arrived because Los Angeles would need all that water
for a long time.>> If water could be brought to the San Fernando, from the Owens
Valley, that rangy grassland that semi-arid terrain could be turned into an
absolute Inaudible>> With all the cats out of all the bags, citizens would now
vote on the inaudible. Mulholland campaigned with a vengeance. Opponents spread
rumors that he was secretly dumping water at night to create a shortage but in
the middle of a drought, with the temperature climbing toward 105, the people of
LA voted 10 to 1 to pay for Mulholland's aqueduct to bring them the river they
had just purchased.>> I think one thing that gets overlooked in discussing the
aqueduct is that it was a popular move from the President of the United States
down to the voters in the city of Los Angeles. This was highly approved project.
>> Pres. Theodore Roosevelt citing the greatest good for the greatest number
made Owens Valley off-limits to further development by surrounding it with a
national forest.>> It suddenly became part of the Inyo National forest the only
national forest in America with hardly any trees. The only trees were the
orchard trees that were being irrigated and were about to die.
>> With the law and the president on his side, Mulholland set out in 1905 to
build his aqueduct across the desert.>> It was a great drama. It was a great
epic drama the building of that aqueduct. You had kneeled teams and you had
men. And they were working in desert heat, arid conditions, water was a
problem. Ironically enough, here in this giant water project they had to worry
about adequate water for the working stock and the men.
>> It could be almost freezing at night and then 110 degrees in the daytime,
practically. Mulholland was there all the time.>> Chief engineer Mulholland had
no formal training in civil engineering. He had in fact never graduated from
grade school.>> The automobile had barely been invented. Clipper ships were
still sailing the seas and this was an engineering project the likes of which
the world had really never seen before.>> Mulholland ordered the 12 foot steel
pipe forged in Germany and shipped around the horn. 100,000 men and women worked
on the aqueduct but never more than a few thousand at a time because the
exhausting and dangerous work kept turnover so high. They had been farmhands,
cowboys and hard rock miners but now they were city employees civil servants
like the chief himself. With no air conditioning, no refrigeration, no
hardhats, in 110 degree heat they crossed the Mohave in five years with a pipe
big enough to hold a locomotive.>> This was, you know, and aqueduct that would
have reached all the way across Massachusetts and then almost all the way back.
Through a desert with mountains.What they were really building was the world's
largest garden hose.>> Surveyors said they could build the aqueduct simply by
following the trail of whiskey bottles Mulholland and Eaton has thrown off the
back of their buckboard in 1904. In the end, the chief and his lieutenants
finish the job under budget and ahead of schedule. William Mulholland built his
original aqueduct so well that to this day it still carries the Owens River to
the people of Los Angeles.>> The phrase grandpa's aqueduct were among my first
words. The day of the dedication of the aqueduct was without a doubt the high
point of my grandfather's life.>> A crowd of 30,000 to 40,000 Los Angelenos
phonetic had gathered at the base of the spillway. There was a formal program
but once the water spilled down the Cascade the formal program was abandoned
because thousands of people rushed with their tin cups to drink the water.
>> When the water came cascading down, Mulholland who was really exhausted at
the time gave what I think is the most concise dedication speech in history. He
unfurled an American flag he turned to the water and he said, there it is. Take
it.>> Based on Mulholland's predictions, it was four times more water than Los
Angeles could use.>> Oh, so slow from oso parkway. If you are on to San Diego
South at Magnolia that accident clear to the right shoulder. We are clear back
to the Westminster Mall with bumper-to-bumper through the beat cities. And you
are going to be making your way on the 91 freeway--
>> That moment actually has to be seen not just in terms of human history
however brief human history is. It has to be seen in terms of geological time.
Here you have the eons-old environment now being profoundly changed by the
changing course of the river and that water in effect created contemporary Los
Angeles.>> It's your earthquake damage repair at remodeling headquarters.
>> This week get inaudible to Honolulu for only 199+ tax round-trip. Sun trips
your pipeline to paradise. With air watch traffic--
>> One of the big banquets in the city celebrating this great event he made a
speech and made the very interesting observation he said we are doomed to
success. Might be a motto for the city, do you think?
>> When water came after 1913, it prepared for an absolute golden age of
building and construction that lasted through-- Inaudible
At one point in the early 20s there was some 67 lumber ships at the San Pedro
Harbor lined up just waiting to get the wood off so they could keep the
construction going. You also had the beginnings of the great Hollywood figures
coming out-- DW Griffith, Cecil B DeMille coming just a few months after the
water. At nowhere as you moved to Los Angeles were you not in the presence of
lawns, hedges, palm trees-- great palm trees which sway above Los Angeles now
like nodding giraffes are taken as the signature of the city. Palm trees were
not native to the region they were planted by the hundreds in the hundreds in
this era. Here you had a semi-arid region where coyotes roamed where tumbleweeds
were blown by the wind which in a very short time was turned into arguably the
most exquisite invented garden in history. Now if you link that with the
adjacent citrus groves, which were still in full bloom in the teens and 20s, I
wasn't there, but it must've been wonderful.>> You had a general sensibility of
that time of turning the desert into and Eden.>> Charlie Chaplin and Alice
Huxley came from England. William Faulkner from Mississippi. Frank Lloyd Wright
from Wisconsin. Everyone came from everywhere.LA was suddenly growing 11 times
faster than New York. Faster even than Calcutta. A million people by 1922 of
whom 31,000 were licensed real estate agents. Now over Mulholland's objections,
Los Angeles began annexing 52 surrounding communities. Soon the city limits
would cover 400 mi.? more than any city in America.
>> There are going to be a lot of irate citizens when they find out that they
are paying for water that they are not going to get.
>> Oh, that's all taken care of. See, Mr. Gitts phonetic, either you bring the
water to LA or you bring LA to the water.>> What he simply meant was that you
would bring the water to where you wanted to bring it and call that place LA and
therefore you could get Los Angeles taxpayers to pay what in effect were a cabal
of real estate speculators to have the city pay millions of dollars for them to
pump water down to land that was not in fact part of the city and then cause
them to vote that is part of the city and thereby increase the value of that
land which they had purchased and held 1000 fold. So they were causing one city
in effect to pay for them to develop another city by-- and then saying well,
it's really same city.>> As the Owens River was finally being relocated across a
quarter of the state of California, it became immediately obvious that there was
way more water than Los Angeles needed. And so because the water was coming in
to the San Fernando Valley, it ended up irrigating the San Fernando Valley. It
was basically an artificial imported River for agriculture there rather than the
agriculture that had been essentially put out of business in the Owens Valley.
>> A syndicates arid tracks in the San Fernando Valley blossomed into orange and
lemon groves, peach orchards, fields of winter tomatoes by 1920, LA County was
the most productive farm county in America.>> It may have been legal, but move a
whole River ostensibly for public good and end up making a bunch of capitalists
even richer than they already were by giving them brand-new water supply was
really a kind of a remarkable feat.>> They are conning LA into building it but
the water is not going to go to LA.It's coming right here..
>> What?>> Everything you can see. Everything around us. I was at the Hall of
records today.>> The original title for Chinatown I actually had-- was going to
call it water and power. Because you know that's what it came. And water was
power. It was money. And those who knew how to manipulate it like much more
directly than anybody could ever manipulate a stock market could make money off
of it. And you could see it. It was a palpable thing. Running through your
movie. You know? I mean just a river of greed.>> Do you have any idea what this
land would be worth with the study water supply? About 30 million more than they
paid for it.>> The syndicate began plowing under their newly developed San
Fernando orange groves for tract homes. Advance guard of the largest subdivision
in history. The value of their land had gone up tenfold.
>> This is a great age of salesmanship. Because these were masters of the art of
encouraging people to envision on an empty hillside the great cities, the towns,
the schools, the churches, the synagogues, which would one day be there had they
but the faith that the salesman had. Owning your own home in this region was
given an almost quasi-religious value that your children would not be delinquent
if you had a home. That your marriage would be happy but many of the ills of our
society were due to the fact that people lived in cities and rented.
>> Mulholland himself did not profit directly from the syndicates dealings but
he was now the highest-paid public employee in California. The University of
California gave an honorary degree to a doctor Mulholland the penniless
immigrant who never finished grade school but could keep the entire LA water
system in his head. LA now had a Mulholland school, Mulholland dam, Mulholland
reservoir. And it named its new winding scenic drive the Mulholland Highway.
>> Every kid in LA knew-- it was one of the first names you learned when you
hit-- when you were old enough to get a junior operator's license because that's
where you parked your car to make out. You know? So you know that's one
association with Mulholland is where you took your girl.
>> The men in the family that was a staple of conversation-- waterworks. There
was always a Dodge to get the family to go out and it was usually either to see
the wildflowers in the spring but it somehow always ended up that we were
standing in front of some big turbine or waterworks and with the men discussing
all of just the way you know I had to discuss impressionist paintings with a
friend at the County Museum.>> The city which never had a reason to be now had
1000 oil wells, its own automobile and airplane factories, and before long, 90%
of all the worlds movies would be made in LA. The imported Owens River allow the
city to expand and three times the rate Mulholland had used in his aqueduct
calculations.>> It wasn't a prophet. He couldn't foresee that LA would grow the
way it did.And that's what upset a lot of the balance.
>> A inaudible committee tried to nominate William Mulholland for mayor. He said
he would rather give birth to a porcupine backwards than the mayor of Los
Angeles.>> It was a scramble. I mean the city kept growing and the Chamber of
Commerce kept booming and there were all these marvelous come-ons from to the
railroad companies and from the Chamber of Commerce and he used to joke and say
that he thought the only thing that can stop LA from growing was to kill Frank
Wiggins and Frank Wiggins was the president of the Chamber of Commerce who spent
his lifetime booming LA all over the country. And encouraging more people and so
it was a little bit like the sorcerer's apprentice. You start the process going
and you got to have more water and more water and more water. And you, the
father of the city's water system are supposed to continue to provide this
water. It's a terrible place to be. And you've got to be ingenious and inventive
and come up with new ideas for getting water.>> Now there were 60,000 realtors.
The Chamber of Commerce sent millions of promotional brochures to the Midwest
and New England to Guatemala City and Paris. Only 10 years after Mulholland
finished his great aqueduct with a fourfold surplus, LA was running out of
water. And he was pondering new sources.The Colorado, Mono Lake, or the Sierras.
>> Maybe the best example of the metamorphosis of Mulholland into an obsessive
water seeker was described to me by Horace Albright who was back in the 20s a
superintendent at Yosemite national Park. And he was at a banquet table with
Mulholland and Mulholland started waxing eloquent about how beautiful the valley
is and then he said what he would do if he were in charge is he would send
photographers into the valley and let them photograph all day long all night
every season and just have the most astounding collection of Yosemite
photographs that you could ever imagine. Put them in books and send them free to
every library in the world and then he would go in there and build a great big
dam and stop the God damned waste.>> Just to the north of Yosemite, late John
Muir's beloved Hetch Hetchy Valley.Here, LA's rival San Francisco was in fact
planning a dam which would soon permanently submerge Hetch Hetchy under 300 feet
of water. Owens Valley had in fact gotten off easy compared to Hetch Hetchy.
Mulholland's aqueduct had only dewatered the southern half of the valley.
Leaving the northern towns and farms to flourish during World War I.
>> Well, Owens Valley was an absolute you might say showplace. It produced
fruit-- of the people from LA would go nuts over to get this fruit from here. I
can remember when the sky would get black with flights of ducks. This was one of
the major flyaways. Oh, absolutely black with them. I mean that. The sky would
be black and even for a day or two or for hours and hours.
>> It was a great time to live up here. It was a very close knit community. You
know? Every Saturday night they would keep the opera house open all night and
they would show the movie and when the movie was over they would push the chairs
back and everybody would dance all night. Then they'd have a breakfast and
everybody would go home back to their branches at sunup, you know? Did this
every Saturday night and it was a great time to live in the Owens Valley.
>> What few people knew was that William Mulholland was about to turn his
attention to what remained of the Owens River.>> This growing city of Los
Angeles becomes like a vampire making a direct connection to the major artery of
the Owens Valley which is the Owens River. And of course imagine those ranchers
who were initially told that Los Angeles would be their partner, their friend,
that they would grow and prosperity along with the city began to see that the
vampire was sucking the lifeblood and that their fertile fields were becoming
parched and nonproductive.>> In the wet years since 1905, relations between the
city and the Valley had been surprisingly cordial but now there was drought. The
city sunk 52 turbine wells into the valley floor to pump groundwater into the
aqueduct crippling surrounding ranches.>> What people resented here is they
didn't have the option. They didn't have a choice. And the pressure that had
built over 20 years and the inaudible was done and this whole water we're
talking about they could care nothing about this property.
>> On Sunday my mother would take me for drives and she would always talk about
apple orchards and peach orchards. And it wasn't until years later that I
realized because growing up in Bishop, there was always a-- we were surrounded
by sagebrush. It was always dry. It was always dusty. There was always dust in
the air. And I couldn't even imagine what my mother was talking about. I
couldn't imagine. And it took me until a young adult to realize that it was much
different at one time. I would have liked to have seen what my grandparents saw
there. I'd like to see the green. I'd like to see the orchards. It must've been
gorgeous. It must've been gorgeous. I mean I think that the Owens Valley is
beautiful now. I grew up there. And is beautiful now. So can you imagine what it
was like when my grandfather was there? When my great-grandfather was there? It
could make me cry.>> Anger mounted as Mulholland's men cut ranchers canals. The
city bought more land, siphoned off more and more water. Half the crops were
gone by 1924.Schools and businesses began to close. Owens Lake went bone dry.
Rumors of resistance began to fly. Someone blew a hole in the siphon. And then,
just before Thanksgiving in 1924, the local bank president and 100 citizens
seize the aqueduct. They opened the floodgates and sent the entire flow of the
Owens River down a ditch and back into its ancient channel in the valley floor.
>> They organized a caravan of these old model T's that drove I think probably
dozens of cars down to the Alabama gates on the aqueduct where there was a
turnout valve will they could basically stop the flow of water to Los Angeles.
>> Talk about community involvement. I know that my grandfather was there. I
have spoken recently with my mother's cousin and she said that she remembers
that it was a party that her mother got her up early and got her dressed up and
she was only four. So, there was a-- I me that was a great step and those people
didn't move from the Alabama gates. They didn't move. That took a lot of
courage. That did.Inaudible>> There wasn't any guns involved. There wasn't that
type of thing. There'd only been a inaudible from there and he was sympathetic
to his inaudible if you will.So there was a whole bunch of oh, arbitration but
discussion but interest focused on this thing is mainly what they were after.
>> The crowd grew to 700 picnicking, singing Onward Christian Soldiers, playing
Enrico Caruso on a hand cranked phonograph. Superintendent Mulholland sent city
police to take back the water but the local sheriff stood between the officers
and the citizens.>> This news did travel around the world. This was a great big
story at the time. And it was embarrassing for Los Angeles. Because they were
being cast as the villain. And you know it was hard to see that any other way.
>> Mulholland saw this as number one an instance of civil insurrection but saw
that nothing less than the survival of Los Angeles itself was at stake and that
basically that had to be a cleansing of farmers from that region. That the two
communities were incompatible. And that they would have to be bought out.
>> And so they decided to try to sit down with some of the leaders of the Owens
Valley and negotiate some kind of a settlement.>> After week, the local bank
president told the Raiders that a Los Angeles consortium would negotiate a fair
price for the remaining water rights in Owens Valley. LA would even consider
sharing the water. With cheers and congratulations, the ranchers and their
families went home. Only to learn later that the deal had fallen through.
>> As these negotiations such as they were are going on, the city is busily
buying more rights, land and water rights in the Valley. Basically buying the
whole place up.>> While ranchers occupied the aqueduct, city agents had secured
legal options on virtually all remaining land and water rights in Owens Valley.
They bought whole towns. Even the county seat and County jail.
>> More trouble. And it's not the first time either. The last bombing was four
years ago and ranchers objecting to the city cutting across their property are
suspected. It's one of the main line pipes about 150 miles north of Los Angeles
that supplies water to the big town. It's a lucky Los Angeles has an emergency
watershed or this might have resulted in a terrible drought disaster. The police
are after the fiends who did this rotten job let's hope they get them. There is
no punishment too strong for them.>> They received a phone call and this is like
telling Leonardo da Vinci that someone has just slashed the Mona Lisa. I mean he
was just appalled outraged and furious and at that point, a certain ugly turn of
events occurred. The mood changed.>> Now, night after night, saboteurs dynamited
Mulholland's masterwork. The great aqueduct inaudible
>> They had numerous stories about my grandfather taking off and blowing up
dynamiting the aqueduct. It took great pride in the fact of that the many raids
to blow up the aqueduct.>> They would go along and dynamite sections and then
they'd go right off back up into the hills, would camp out for weeks and weeks
and weeks after they had bombed it they were afraid to come home and have them
have their wives and kids had to basically hold family and Fort together.
>> The city named three women and 15 men as ringleaders. But could never win a
single conviction.>> They were heroes you know in your own mind. You know, those
guys are great for what they did and everything. But we always thought that you
wish we'd been there if we were kids, you know, but--
>> Interestingly enough, then he went on to be a California State Sen. So he
wasn't a crazy man. He was just a man on a mission and a purpose.
>> Mulholland and his colleagues said look, this can't go on. This is-- you are
threatening the water supply for a great city. This is criminal. And they sent
machine guns up there and it stopped.>> Train loads of them were going up to the
Owens Valley and basically imposing martial law. There were searchlights and
floodlights up and down that Valley sweeping across the aqueduct all night long.
>> Mulholland sent 600 heavily armed police to secure the city's water supply.
Backed by the full force of state and federal law, endorsed by the Chamber of
Commerce.>> As Jean Renoir said, everyone has his reasons. And I'm sure he had
his reasons and he justified it because he had to. I can see how it would've
been very easy to get carried away by powerful men saying see what you can do
for the city. You know? What a great man you will be. You know?
>> When I was a kid, you know, he was a bad guy. He was the guy with the black
hat. He was-- we all hated him, you know? I mean we all talked about a lot and
you know what evil guy he was, but he had a fantastic vision but he didn't care
who he stepped over to get it. He didn't care what happened to the Owens Valley.
>> I would say that when I was a little girl it was not good to be a Mulholland
in Owens Valley and I was never taken there and my folks if they should chance
to travel my mother told me they always registered at a hotel using her maiden
name. Because we were just not well liked in Owens Valley and it was not a good
name to carry.>> Well, Mulholland was a very honest man. Because he said that
everyone in Bishop was a son of a bitch and that there wasn't enough pine trees
to hang the natives on which they deserved whereas the rest of them they went
with the protocol and with inaudible and so on but not Mulholland.
>> He knew that it was a vein hope I mean to think that they could go back I
mean the water had been taken. It was the fait accompli. There was no turning
back. Owens Valley was not going to be reverted back to what it had been in
1905. That deed had been done.>> Somebody did put up a sign and that said Los
Angeles city limits way out in the Owens Valley as kind of a bitter joke. It was
really than everyone knew William Mulholland had triumphed. He had one the
Valley was really his.>> Before long, city bulldozers began knocking down
farmhouses and feeling and irrigation ditches.>> Well first we had the Valley
then the sellers came in and took away from us in the city of Los Angeles came
and they took it away from them.>> All Mulholland needed now was a place to
store water for the growing city.But former LA Mayor Fred Eaton owned the only
reservoir site in Owens Valley.And was demanding $1 million for it. So
Mulholland build a huge dam in the hills just 40 miles from downtown LA. It was
the largest arch support dam in North America. The final link in a decade of
triumph. By the spring of 1928, the reservoir in San Francisquito Canyon was a
full to the brim with a year's supply of Owens River water. Far from the scene
of battle. On March 12, workers noticed a small leak on the north side.
Mulholland inspected the leak pronounced the dam sound and went home to bed.
>> My grandfather was awakened from his sleep with a phone call saying the dam
had gone out. And his first response was he stumbled toward the phone was oh
please God don't let people be killed.>> There was no warning. There was no
warning system. And it started wiping out whole communities.
>> You had so much water in that dam. That there were 1000 ton blocks of
concrete riding the crest. It was not water at a certain point. It was trees,
homes, blocks of concrete, rocks, rubble. It was a semisolid wall advancing at
20 or 30 miles an hour 40 and 50, 60 feet high. You couldn't run from it.
>> I was five years old when the St. Francis dam broke. And with my limited
perceptions I realized some dreadful thing. It was like bringing a dark curtain
down over a lighted area. My father took me-- he was-- my father was stunned and
he took me in the car. My mother was not well at the time. And we drove up to
the dam site and on the way up, he taught me how to say San Francisquito Canyon
and we rehearsed it over and over as if it were some kind of a catechism lesson
of what it did for me was imprint that name forever in my mind as a scene of
some terrible fate which had befallen our family.
>> Mulholland surveyed the greatest man-made disaster in California history. His
St. Francis dam had killed as many people as the San Francisco earthquake.
>> I've always been moved all my life at the pictures that were taken of in the
morning that he was-- went up and surveyed the ruins of the dam failure. It's
like looking at the most stricken human being I've ever seen. It's a dead stark
look at his on his face as he stands amid the rubble of something he had
created. It was an engineer's most horrible fate any engineer could have to
build a structure that fails and also kills.>> So Mulholland was in a state of
shock. He made an initial effort really. It wasn't much of an effort-- to blame
the whole thing on dynamiters phonetic which was the term he now used
generically to refer to anybody in the Owens Valley.
But it was soon very obvious that the dam had failed by itself and nobody had
sabotaged it and that Mulholland had paid a visit to the dam just hours earlier
and said that the dam was fine. So his reputation which had-- he had been a God
figure in Los Angeles.>> Mulholland went from being of the father of the city,
the founder of the city to standing possible indictment.
>> The precise cause was never found. No criminal charges were ever filed, but
the coroner's jury held William Mulholland responsible. He accepted the blame.
Broke down in sobs and said that he envied the dead.
>> They kept slowly taking away the water from the canals and the ditches and
everything slowly but surely they got everything siphoned down and so the land
of the trees and the whole form says they all died off and all the old orchards
died off and they are all gone now all the houses are all gone. So they just
turned back into a desert as it was, basically.>> When we traveled to Los
Angeles we watched the aqueduct. My parents would
always say, there is our water. Girls, that water came from the Owens Valley.
And as a child I remember feeling animosity towards Los Angeles. You always
knew. He always felt that they took our water.>> Mulholland resigned in
disgrace. His real achievements clouded by the disaster and by the suffering in
Owens Valley. His plans for still greater aqueducts lay on the drawing board but
to the people of LA he was an embarrassment. Officials began referring to the
Mulholland reservoir as the Hollywood reservoir. Owens Valley was history but
fantasy and folklore lived on.The myth of rampaging bullies destroying a
paradise, gallant ranchers defending their homes.>> These gentlemen bring word
from the capital. The inaudible Valley has been condemned.
>> Condemned?>> What do you mean?>> It seems that Metripol phonetic City needs
more water and power. So the state has decided to build a dam across cut stone
Canyon and turn the Valley into a reservoir.>> Just let them start trying to
build a dam around here.>> The state authorized me to build a dam. And it's
going to be built whether you like it or not.>> Take it easy, you don't know the
kind of people you're dealing with, Mister.>> But he will find out.
>> In 1934 using Mulholland's original plans, the Metropolitan water District
lasted a new aqueduct all the way to the Arizona State line to its second River,
the Colorado.>> Unless we take immediate steps to bring in water from an outside
source, the people of Southern California will be up against a serious water
shortage. But we are fortunate in having within our reach a water source capable
of supplying our needs. This source is the Colorado River.
Inaudible>> The governor of Arizona deployed his state militia to the river's
bank to stop Los Angeles from taking Colorado River water.
>> It was to no avail.>> Final resolution would not come until 30 years later
after one of the longest court cases in American history.
>> On the day when the waters of the Colorado River rushes into this aqueduct
the greatest engineering feat of its kind ever accomplished will take its place
among the wonders of the world.>> It is a wonderful thing to contemplate this
new conquest of the great Southwest were everything that man desires is
present. Everything except sufficient water. With sufficient water we can be
assured of a great and a stable civilization.>> Wow. What a day. I'm afraid
we're going to be busy. Hi, Greg. It was a high-speed pursuit earlier this
morning. They have the San Bernardino westbound on and off ramps at Atlantic
closed down because of a police investigation.Bumper to bumper to Puente.
Foreign Language Spoken>> -- we'd like to welcome you all aboard Universal
Studios Hollywood super trim presented by Texaco. Oh, yeah. Uh-oh. I think I
hear something. It might get a little bit wet.>> Hey, watch out for that tree
back there!>> He brought enough elements together, water, population, wealth so
that Los Angeles was now almost condemned to grow and grow and grow.
>> So after the 1920s, Los Angeles' history is almost defined by an obsessive
constant search for more and more water. Hoover dam was authorized in 1928,
finished by the mid-30s then Mono Lake which is north of the Owens Valley was
hooked up to the aqueduct. And began draining all the streams that feed this
irreplaceable natural wonder out there.>> Mulholland had long had his eye on
Mono Lake, 100 miles north of Owens Valley. In 1936, his successors dusted off
his plans and pushed the aqueduct north to mono seeking again the greatest good
for the greatest number.>> People really shouldn't have any problem with our
water system and take it for granted or the water people are doing their job
well. I always felt that I was working for a good purpose. I wasn't doing
something that in my view really didn't basically benefit society. I felt that I
was working on something that was a fundamental benefit to society. I was proud
of that.>> The people of LA could not depend on water from ancient streams
feeding Mono Lake.>> This is the desert. This is the grim waterless waste that
covered most of Los Angeles even within the memory of living men. Here between
the mountains and the sea, Los Angeles was built. Here is a living breathing
proof that energy and vision can build a metropolis almost overnight. Angelenos
phonetic are likely to live on a ranch still within city limits. Perhaps a few
years ago they were residents of Iowa, Illinois, New Jersey. Here they quickly
abandon old conventions of inaudible. Dress as they please make the most of
their mild seductive climate. The inaudible introduction to this promised land
of exotic people, sunshine, stucco, money, optimism. Success is her pattern.
This is LA.This is America.>> The rise of Nazis in Germany and the fleeing of
all that talent have the creation of a euro Southern California. Otto Preminger
who was of course fleeing the Nazis was at the Hillcrest country club and people
playing cards and people were talking. And these two people started talking in
Hungarian and they were talking white Hungarian phonetic. Otto Preminger said,
what's the matter, he says, why are you talking in Hungarian? This is Los
Angeles. He said, talk German.>> From Berlin, New York, Alabama, from all over
the world people flooded into Southern California. They said it was just like
everyone else only more so.>> There was a new paradise. It's something like--
you know love and good health. You really miss it by its absence very often. I
mean it just wasn't aware-- I was never aware growing up, but how wonderful it
was until it was gone and that was the air itself. The air was wonderful. If you
stop and think about the mean temperature of the climate here year-round, it's
probably the most perfect climate to you know, sort of walk around and with
almost no clothing because the air you just feel that is almost an extension of
your own skin. It doesn't-- it's not too hot, it's not too cold.
>> The machinery of water acquisition overworked the Owens River, the Colorado,
and the Mono basin. In 1964, the Metropolitan water District proposed diverting
the Columbia River to Southern California. The future had arrived.
>> Somebody finally decided rather than just go after another source of water
every 10 or 20 years, why don't we go to where there's so much water we will
have enough for 200 years. And where was that place? Alaska. It would have
brought this water down in huge jolts, irrigated Nevada, irrigated Eastern
Oregon on the way. Some of it would've gone all the way to Mexico. It was going
to go to Arizona, it was going to go to Texas.>> Nobody really blinked. There
were lots of people in the business who thought well, yeah. It's maybe a little
premature, but this is going to happen someday because it has to.
>> This is not a mirage. But rather a preview of an atomic Marvel of tomorrow. A
milestone in man's development. A nuclear powered Agro industrial complex. With
a nuclear reactor as the energy source, and a D salting plant as the fresh water
source, the desert may be transformed into a nuclear powered Agro industrial
complex.>> There were plans to last so you know icebergs and tell them down. You
know,it was like the flimflam man. I mean there was no end to these people who
had plans to dam San Francisco Bay, to pipelines beyond your wildest dreams.
These-- and this wasn't about carrying oil. This was about carrying water. This
is water.>> When these reactors are coupled to a desalting plant, approximately
1 billion gallons of fresh water will be produced per day.
>> Of course at the time, nobody was challenging the idea of using 8 gallons of
water per flush in a toilet. Or irrigating your lawn to the point where it's
standing an inch deep in water. Nobody thought about conservation. People only
thought about supply.>> The city had long since exhausted supply from the tiny
Los Angeles River and cemented over its channel by 1960. The DWP built a
reservoir to store supply of Owens River water near the center of Los Angeles.
>> The Los Angeles city police helicopter is here. The Los Angeles city fire
department helicopters here. The police are on the ground with motorcycles and
automobiles. Trying to effectively activate people from here so there can't
possibly be any more loss of life than there is. Property no telling how much
property has already been lost.>> A triangle shaped wedge tears out of the
asphalt and concrete lined wall of the earth-filled phonetic dam of the Baldwin
Hills reservoir. And millions of gallons of water raced down the canyon toward
the homes below in the community between downtown Los Angeles and International
Airport. Almost 300 million gallons of water in 77 minutes. An incredible
disaster.>> The Department of water and power had no choice but to carry on
since it now served 3 million people. In 1966, LA acquired its third River like
a giant version of Mulholland's Owens Valley project, the California State
aqueducts now brought the Feather River from 600 miles north. Enough water to
fill the Rose Bowl every 90 minutes.>> Los Angeles by the 70s was reaching 200
miles in one direction, 250 miles in another direction and 600 miles in a third
direction. For water. And it still wasn't enough.>> In 1970 the Department of
water and power using Mulholland's original sketches finished the second
barrel, a parallel aqueduct not far from the original. Sucking now twice as much
water from Mono Lake. The million year old Lake now fell 2 feet every year. It
was the only stop for a million migrating seabirds on their way from the Arctic
to Bolivia.>> You could see the lake going down and down and down. Pretty soon
it it was not even growing around the lake anymore. Everything was drying up all
the little springs were dying. You know. That was really devastating because we
thought the whole Lake is going to be like this. And when you think of God's
given like you think it should be like it was.>> The local people had already
resigned themselves to the fact that the lake was going to dry up or get to a
very small level. Just because of the adversary Department of water and power is
too big to fight. It was not anything that anybody can do.
>> Great alkali dust storms began boiling up off the exposed shores of Mono and
the dry bed of Owens Lake. By 1974, Owens Valley the Switzerland of America had
the worst particulate pollution in the country.>> The sense that somehow LA had
sinned against another people became a central imagery in this whole water
story. And one that I've always had a lot of trouble
with. Because I've always sympathized with the underdog but at the same time
I've been proud of my grandfather so it's given me a great deal of conflict to
have to come to terms with that.>> Why are you doing it? How much better can you
eat? What can you buy that you can't already afford?
>> The future, Mr. Gibbs. The future.>> And the crimes that they committed in
the name of the future, against the future is really the history of water in
California here in LA. I mean it's-- it's just the supreme irony.
>> See, Mr. Gibbs, most people never have to face the fact that at the right
time and the right place they are capable of anything.
>> Sometimes they are so monstrous that they can't figure out how to punish them
so they actually sort of reward them. And inaudible name is on the scenic route
of the city and inaudible of those names are on plaques as city founders. Rather
than in jail where they belonged.>> When I think of a movie like Chinatown as an
easy out it oversimplifies it's melodramatic. It's not true I may not literally
not true. But it provides a rather easy explanation of events and for people who
like to bash LA is perfect.New York Times loves to hold it up as a piece of
history.>> The movie Chinatown was bad at contorted history but it was powerful
myth.Rekindling violence against the Department of water and power. Now
headquartered in a building that cost as much as Mulholland's original aqueduct.
>> There was violence here before a long time ago back in 1924 angry farmers and
ranchers lined the wall armed with shotguns and rifles. They blew holes in the
aqueduct 17 times. This year it took this form a dynamite blast at the gates of
the first aqueduct the water for Los Angeles stopped briefly instead--
>> Resistance was futile. The Department of water and power by now had more
manpower than the population of Bishop more in fact than the entire population
of Owens Valley. But this time something had changed. David Gaines a young
biologist from LA and a dozen University of California students had begun a
careful study of Mono Lake's singular ecosystem. They found it on the brink of
collapse.>> We knew about Owens like of course. Now it's just a dry ditch you
know 100 miles to the south. We realized that Mono Lake could look like that
someday and once we realized both here, that all that would be lost we couldn't
let it just go down without making some effort to save it.
>> By 1976, Mono Lake had fallen 40 feet. Exposing mineral towers which had
formed underwater over the ages. It had become three times saltier than the
ocean.>> What we are asking what Mono Lake is asking all of us is where we going
to draw the line? If we don't share some water with Mono Lake will be next? Will
it be like Tahoe, will be the Eagle River? The Yukon? Will it be on and on until
the last of our singing rivers and beautiful lakes are gone because we've taken
every last drop we watched the last waterfall and the last salmon follow the
California State emblem the California grizzly into oblivion? It is a
battleground in that sense. It's asking us how much are we going to share with
the Earth?>> Well it was very primitive. I mean there was 12 people only one or
two cars everybody else did their research via bicycle. They did take their
binoculars and their backpack and their lunch and then hop on their bikes and
they'd ride down the dirt roads and dump their bikes and hike out for a couple
miles and then walk through mud and you know they were really the quintessential
researchers out there braving the elements.>> All those college boys come over
they all want to look like professors you know they got big beers you know and
so Mr. Gaines he was one of them. You know?And he looked just like the rest of
them. You know? Kind of like a hippie I'd say but I don't want to say you know
he wasn't a hippie but he looked that way.But he was pretty smart that guy. He
would start a thing going-->> When I grew up in Los Angeles I never learned
where water came from. And it was only after doing some complex calculations
that we learned that if diversions continued this Lake will fall another 40 to
60 vertical feet. What we will be left with is an alkaline waste land a sterile
chemical sump where there is now one of the most beautiful and life productive
places on earth.>> Far more than natural beauty was threatened at Mono Lake.
>> What was at stake was a big aquatic ecosystem that was very simple but very
productive. I mean the numbers are astronomical. You got algae and then the
brine shrimp eat the algae and then you've got millions of birds coming every
summer to eat the brine flies and the brine shrimp. A far off dream was out
there but I don't think we gazed up at it too much. It might be too
discouraging. I mean to have a handful of biologists fighting the Department of
water and power of the city of Los Angeles with a multimillion dollar budget was
too big of a contrast.>> When William Mulholland took water from Owens Valley
and Mono Lake years before, no one questioned the damage to nature. But an
environmental movement had come of age in America. Along with powerful new laws
and a great shift in public opinion. Committees at Mono Lake and Owens Valley
together with the Audubon Society, went to court to stop the water conquest
Mulholland had set in motion in 1905.>> If you're angry and have nothing else--
no other recourse I think dynamite comes to mind. And they were ranchers. They
understood dynamite. We were college biologists. No experience with dynamite. We
knew facts and figures and we knew that we could you know we were educated
people and we could probably figure out how to find lobbyists to go to help us
in Sacramento and how to find lawyers.People were saying well, ask for a lot. Go
way high and then you compromise down with the politicians and the agencies and
we were all biologists and we kind of said that doesn't sound right. Why can't
we just start with what we know is the truth and it just stay there forever? And
that's what we did.>> The courts ruled that drying out the Owens River or
streams feeding Mono Lake was not in the public interest. In 1988, the state
forced the city to return water to Mono for the first time in half a century.
Los Angeles began water conservation on a scale never before seen in America.
And now shares the water in a fragile peace with Owens Valley and Mono Lake.
>> One local person said, if you guys say the lake I'll eat my hat. It turns out
that we saved the lake and we have the regulations and people seem much happier.
We see water running down the creek fish in the creek. Maybe some of them
remember the great numbers of ducks and geese that were down at the lake and
they look forward to that being in the future again.
>> I didn't think that they would succeed in persuading the inaudible to let the
water in again.>> What you think they would not succeed?
>> Well, how can you fight the city of Los Angeles? So really this is a victory.
A great victory.>> David Gaines did not live to see the victory. He had died a
year before in an automobile accident not far from Mono Lake.
>> And so finally, the machine that Mulholland had set in motion just kind of
began to fall apart. The whole posture of the Los Angeles Department of water
and power and the city changed. The city negotiated with Mono Lake folks and
decided to give more water back to the lake. It gave up on the idea of importing
Klamath River water or Columbia River water.>> I think ultimately, it was
people's feeling why bring more water in if it just encourages more growth that
forces us to bring more water in. You know?It's sort of a death vortex. It's the
red Queen in Alice in Wonderland running faster and faster just to stay in
place. And that mentality has sort of died a respectful death. And you know if
there's an occasional shortage well that's too bad. We are in a desert here. We
are not supposed to be like Miami all the time every day of the year to
infinity.>> After the dam failure, my grandfather underwent the most profound
change that you can imagine and-- but he had been a vigorous functioning
70-year-old man or 72-year-old man at the time the dam failed. And he simply
shriveled. He'd come out to the ranch and he sits in the living room with his
cigar and the conversation would go around and he would just shut his eyes. He
would sit there like some kind of a sleeping giant. I was so struck as a child
when I attended the funeral and his body lay in state and city hall and the
working men who came to pay their last respects to him. Some of them cried and
when I was 12 years old and that made a big impression on me because I'd never
seen grown men cry.And so, I derived from that that this was a man who had
commanded a lot of love and respect in his day. And I've spent a lifetime trying
to drive that with all the attacks that had been made on him by people who
didn't know him.>> Freeways are settling down, believe it or not. We check on
the 405 and the 101 leaving the Hollywood Hills. Not bad at all. No need to take
alternate routes such as Laurel Canyon, Coldwater Canyon, or even Mulholland
Drive. I'm Dr. Roadmap flying for Capt. Jorge inaudible 'copter 790.
Music