WEBVTT

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>> I have no apologies. I was a crusader for the development of water. I was the

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Messiah! I was the evangelist that went out and argued persuasively to develop

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our rivers and water supplies for the benefit of the people.

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>> In the American desert, we have built a great new civilization in less than a

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century. Where none could possibly be in the natural order of things. We have

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made the land wet where it was dry and dry where it was wet. We have lifted

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great rivers out of their ancient beds and moved them over half a continent. Our

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great cities stand in a desert that is drier than the plains of North Africa. It

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would all be impossible without the breathtaking manipulation of water. We

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fought over water, thrived on water, and finally we engineered the desert out of

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existence.>> Next to God, there's water.>> Everybody is conscious of water. If

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you head for the river with a bucket-- an empty bucket, you are liable to get

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shot.>> Can you imagine today in American city acquiring an entire river?

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>> The idea of subduing nature has captivated the whole country.

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>> Congress cannot appropriate enough money fast enough to build more dams.

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>> We built the dams for all the right reasons when they were desperately needed

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with little thought to the consequences. The developing world watched and envied

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our success.>> The engineering marvel that is inaudible dam inspected by Emperor

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Haile Selassie of Ethiopia.>> Supplying water to the population growing that

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fast is extremely difficult.>> It's a little bit like the sorcerer's

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apprentice. You've got to have more water, more water, more water.

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>> They are going to dam this canyon.>> There is no end to these people who had

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plans to dam San Francisco Bay,pipelines beyond your wildest dreams. This wasn't

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about curing oil. This was about carrying water.>> We have forgotten that the

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natural West is barren and fatally dry. And that our new bountiful West is a

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fragile construction. Here and there are reminders

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of what happens when the water is turned off. Or when the water works fail.

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>> Somehow the water stopped flowing. You have a desert again overnight.

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>> The dam's gone.>> The whole thing is gone now?

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>> The whole thing is gone. It rolled over about five minutes ago.

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>> Okay.>> If you can give us any help on radio or whatnot get the people

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started there out.>> All right. Where do you want the people evacuated?

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>> Well, we would like to get them off the river in low-lying inaudible

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>> Well, it's 6:22 at 710 Talk KMPC, I'm Dominic with Air Watch Traffic and I've

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got to tell you the jackknifed big rig in Pasadena has the 210 eastbound in

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trouble right at Rosemead where the right three lanes are out of commission, the

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jackknifed big rig there and about a quarter-mile slow. On the westbound side

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almost across the fence from it right at Sierra Madre. Right lane is blocked to

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the inaudible so get ready it's slow from the 605 and how are things in Orange

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County?>> Hey, Scott! inaudible>> -- in Ronald Reagan Freeway on the west

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inaudible Reseda Boulevard inaudible Foreign Language Spoken

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>> A car that spun out and hit the center divider and the two left lanes are

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protected by CHP vehicles.>> Use alternate routes such as Laurel Canyon or even

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Mulholland today.>> I think my grandfather has a vision with the city like

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Dublin. Which was the city of his childhood. And it was a vision I think of a

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19th century city. Where people ambled on streets and a new one another and

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enjoyed the theater and the opera and the University. A civilized 19th century

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city.>> No other Buick dealership in California has been best in its class for

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seven years. That's because no other Buick dealership has sold more than 10,000

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Buicks in the last 10 years. The list goes on and on. Right now we have lots of

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traffic to talk about, too. First of all the KABC traffic alert--

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>> The thing that you have to remember about Los Angeles is that it never really

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had a reason to be there. It had no minerals, no metals, no forests, and other

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words, everything that any major American city used to develop itself, LA

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lacked. And above all it lacked water.>> Since the beginning of time this was a

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place of earthquakes and perpetual drought. First claimed by the Spaniards, and

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then conquered by the Americans.Virtually everyone here had come from somewhere

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else. In 1878 William Mulholland arrived from the Green Hills of Ireland. He had

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stowed away on a sailing ship worked as a lumberjack failed as a gold miner and

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had walked across Panama to save $25 and train fare. He was fond of one armed

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chin-ups and grand Opera.Mulholland found work as a ditch digger on the growing

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town's dilapidated water system.>> LA was desperate to become a modern city. It

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had been a backwater for so many decades.>> But its water system, on the other

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hand, was pretty much the same old Jerry built thing. A bunch of old

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waterwheels. The falling apart system.>> He worked hard, read Shakespeare, and

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hydraulic engineering late into the night. Taught himself to keep the entire LA

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water system in his head and climbed through the ranks. In 1886 when his boss

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suddenly dropped dead, William Mulholland found himself superintendent of the LA

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water system. The little desert Pueblo had grown to 100,000 people thanks to the

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Chamber of Commerce and a new railroad. And by 1903 LA had sucked dry the tiny

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Los Angeles River. It's only source of water.>> My mother would tell me these

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stories of growing up without water. One bath a week on Saturday night and I

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washed in a big zinc tub that was dragged into the

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kitchen and water heated and Poppa got the first bath, mama got the second and

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the kids-- mother told me you know they were not what you would call white trash

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but she told me she never had a bath in pure clean water. Now I was raised with

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a real sense that water was a precious item and not to be squandered.

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>> Superintendent Mulholland tried to make Los Angeles live within its means.

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But growth sabotaged everything he did. By 1903, the chief knew that LA would

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have to stop growing or he would have to find a new source of water. His friend,

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Mayor Fred Eaton and told him of a great Valley 200 miles to the north.

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Pomacentrus phonetic Paiutes had lived along the Owens River. White settlers who

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colonized Owens Valley found Paiutes irrigating natural grasses with several

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miles of small irrigation canals.>> My grandmother told my only sister that when

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the whites came they started to push the Indians up into the rocky places where

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the water was scarce because they wanted the other for their cattle and things.

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And they came in and they fenced everything up. They start saying if you want to

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use my water, you have to have special permission and the Indians always let the

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water run. It was never something that belonged to one individual person. It

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belonged to the whole community.>> By 1904, settlers from New England,

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Switzerland, and Scotland had taken the Indians land, established farms in a

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dozen towns and a steamboat service on the age old Owens Lake. They dug and

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elaborate irrigation system diverting the Owens River into hundreds of miles of

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ditches. Former Mayor Fred Eaton convinced Mulholland to set out northward

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across the Mojave Desert in the fall of 1904 toward Owens Valley.

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>> They went by Buck boy phonetic which was the only way you can go it took them

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about two weeks to get there. I think there was a trail of whiskey bottles all

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the way out.>> In two weeks, Mulholland and Eaton were on the banks of the Owens

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River.>> At certain times of the year, in what years, anyway, you can get a

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little glimpse of what the river must've been like then and how it must have

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impressed Mulholland. The Owens Valley is one of the most dramatic places in the

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world.You have on the one side the Sierra Nevada, virtually every mountain over

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14,000 feet, and then you have a drop of 2 miles to the valley floor and then a

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rise of almost 2 miles up to the White Mountain range. Because the mountains

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stop virtually all weather, it is in the rain-- and there is no rain in the

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Owens Valley. It is a true desert looking up onto huge snow-covered peaks. And

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through the middle of it comes what you almost could call a-- Mississippi River

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given the setting. It is so improbable in this harsh desert to see River that

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used to be as engorged-- And not only was this river that could take care of the

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next 20, 30, probably inaudible 50 years of population growth in LA but it could

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flow all the way by gravity.Inaudible>> -- so full of enthusiasm he said you

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know I've seen something here-- water that will last us into the next century.

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>> And I think Mulholland suddenly must have changed and he saw himself as a

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sort of a builder of a Roman masterwork as somebody who kept a great hydraulic

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engineering tradition alive. I can't tell you what went through his head, but

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suddenly he was a convert. Having been more of an efficiency guy and a

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conservationist, suddenly he became an empire builder almost overnight.

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>> And now, they were going to capture a river. The only River that kind of

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accidentally flowed through this desert and they were going to move the whole

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river across this 200-plus miles of terrain that they just covered at some risk

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probably to their lives.>> The problem facing Mulholland was at the river was

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owned. All the water rights were owned by farmers who were irrigating something

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like 60,000 acres.This was a thriving agricultural area at the time and it was

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being further developed by the Bureau of reclamation. Now how in the world were

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you going to arrest that water away from these farmers and the federal

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government? That was the dilemma.>> Can you imagine today and American city

00:14:26.439 --> 00:14:33.769
acquiring an entire River for its future? Of course. It goes without saying. It

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could be done but it was done then.>> inaudible his ages for a federal project

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meant to irrigate Owens Valley Holland's men went to the county courthouse.

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There they convinced clerks to show them these, maps, and records the stream

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flows. Within days, Eaton was quietly buying property and water rights.

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Inaudible-- to a local irrigation project but to the city of Los Angeles.

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Without telling Mulholland, former Mayor Fred Eaton about the only dam site in

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Owens Valley for himself.>> Once the city knew who had the best water rights and

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who was likeliest to sell those rights, it was basically a done deal.

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>> It didn't take very long for them to capture most of that river.

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>> Two people who had ultimately benefited and who knew the whole story of this

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scheme were the publishers of the Los Angeles times. Harrison Gray Otis and

00:15:46.669 --> 00:15:52.470
Harry Chandler. They were the big promoters and boosters but they were sworn to

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secrecy as this was going on. They did not let the cat out of the bag until they

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couldn't help themselves and finally under a headline that said Titanic project

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to give the city River they talked about how the whole thing had gone. And you

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know when you read that today and imagine a major city newspaper just kind of

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gloating over the triumph of you know it's artifice and chicanery, it makes you

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real in a sense. But that was what Los Angeles was like in those days. It was--

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the climate was one of just getting what you want any way you can get it.

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>> The Owens Valley paper saw the future differently. The still secret aqueduct

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route would pass through the San Fernando Valley on its way to LA. And someone

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was buying up near worthless land in the San Fernando. Now, another cat out of

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the bag. It was a real estate syndicate that would make millions of Owens River

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water irrigated their newly acquired San Fernando Valley land.

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>> What was happening all the while these water rights in the Owens Valley were

00:17:11.419 --> 00:17:15.009
being acquired was that the San Fernando Valley is being bought up by a

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syndicate of people who represented the power structure of Los Angeles with the

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kind of exquisite sense of proportion.>> I suppose you could make a case for

00:17:26.579 --> 00:17:31.710
this being this incestuous cabal of hidden you know Jonathan inaudible

00:17:31.730 --> 00:17:39.930
California inaudible oligarchy. Old boys' wasp network-- no Jews, darks,

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Blacks, Mexicans allowed.>> Quietly, the entire San Fernando Valley was bought

00:17:46.259 --> 00:17:52.799
up by the arch capitalists of Los Angeles for the purpose of irrigating it when

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the Owens River finally arrived because Los Angeles would need all that water

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for a long time.>> If water could be brought to the San Fernando, from the Owens

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Valley, that rangy grassland that semi-arid terrain could be turned into an

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absolute Inaudible>> With all the cats out of all the bags, citizens would now

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vote on the inaudible. Mulholland campaigned with a vengeance. Opponents spread

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rumors that he was secretly dumping water at night to create a shortage but in

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the middle of a drought, with the temperature climbing toward 105, the people of

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LA voted 10 to 1 to pay for Mulholland's aqueduct to bring them the river they

00:18:44.000 --> 00:18:54.789
had just purchased.>> I think one thing that gets overlooked in discussing the

00:18:54.809 --> 00:19:02.409
aqueduct is that it was a popular move from the President of the United States

00:19:02.429 --> 00:19:09.420
down to the voters in the city of Los Angeles. This was highly approved project.

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>> Pres. Theodore Roosevelt citing the greatest good for the greatest number

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made Owens Valley off-limits to further development by surrounding it with a

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national forest.>> It suddenly became part of the Inyo National forest the only

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national forest in America with hardly any trees. The only trees were the

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orchard trees that were being irrigated and were about to die.

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>> With the law and the president on his side, Mulholland set out in 1905 to

00:19:39.279 --> 00:19:51.839
build his aqueduct across the desert.>> It was a great drama. It was a great

00:19:51.859 --> 00:19:55.849
epic drama the building of that aqueduct. You had kneeled teams and you had

00:19:55.869 --> 00:20:07.180
men. And they were working in desert heat, arid conditions, water was a

00:20:07.200 --> 00:20:12.779
problem. Ironically enough, here in this giant water project they had to worry

00:20:12.799 --> 00:20:19.319
about adequate water for the working stock and the men.

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>> It could be almost freezing at night and then 110 degrees in the daytime,

00:20:28.730 --> 00:20:33.379
practically. Mulholland was there all the time.>> Chief engineer Mulholland had

00:20:33.399 --> 00:20:38.480
no formal training in civil engineering. He had in fact never graduated from

00:20:38.500 --> 00:20:43.399
grade school.>> The automobile had barely been invented. Clipper ships were

00:20:43.419 --> 00:20:47.779
still sailing the seas and this was an engineering project the likes of which

00:20:47.799 --> 00:20:55.869
the world had really never seen before.>> Mulholland ordered the 12 foot steel

00:20:55.889 --> 00:21:01.000
pipe forged in Germany and shipped around the horn. 100,000 men and women worked

00:21:01.019 --> 00:21:05.599
on the aqueduct but never more than a few thousand at a time because the

00:21:05.619 --> 00:21:13.139
exhausting and dangerous work kept turnover so high. They had been farmhands,

00:21:13.159 --> 00:21:18.250
cowboys and hard rock miners but now they were city employees civil servants

00:21:18.269 --> 00:21:25.759
like the chief himself. With no air conditioning, no refrigeration, no

00:21:25.779 --> 00:21:30.279
hardhats, in 110 degree heat they crossed the Mohave in five years with a pipe

00:21:30.299 --> 00:21:37.670
big enough to hold a locomotive.>> This was, you know, and aqueduct that would

00:21:37.690 --> 00:21:43.579
have reached all the way across Massachusetts and then almost all the way back.

00:21:43.599 --> 00:21:50.309
Through a desert with mountains.What they were really building was the world's

00:21:50.329 --> 00:21:57.119
largest garden hose.>> Surveyors said they could build the aqueduct simply by

00:21:57.139 --> 00:22:02.000
following the trail of whiskey bottles Mulholland and Eaton has thrown off the

00:22:02.019 --> 00:22:19.069
back of their buckboard in 1904. In the end, the chief and his lieutenants

00:22:19.089 --> 00:22:21.129
finish the job under budget and ahead of schedule. William Mulholland built his

00:22:21.129 --> 00:22:23.309
original aqueduct so well that to this day it still carries the Owens River to

00:22:23.309 --> 00:22:35.309
the people of Los Angeles.>> The phrase grandpa's aqueduct were among my first

00:22:35.329 --> 00:22:41.849
words. The day of the dedication of the aqueduct was without a doubt the high

00:22:41.869 --> 00:22:51.690
point of my grandfather's life.>> A crowd of 30,000 to 40,000 Los Angelenos

00:22:51.710 --> 00:22:55.839
phonetic had gathered at the base of the spillway. There was a formal program

00:22:55.859 --> 00:23:02.529
but once the water spilled down the Cascade the formal program was abandoned

00:23:02.549 --> 00:23:09.919
because thousands of people rushed with their tin cups to drink the water.

00:23:09.939 --> 00:23:13.220
>> When the water came cascading down, Mulholland who was really exhausted at

00:23:13.240 --> 00:23:19.659
the time gave what I think is the most concise dedication speech in history. He

00:23:19.679 --> 00:23:37.629
unfurled an American flag he turned to the water and he said, there it is. Take

00:23:37.649 --> 00:23:39.669
it.>> Based on Mulholland's predictions, it was four times more water than Los

00:23:39.669 --> 00:23:50.319
Angeles could use.>> Oh, so slow from oso parkway. If you are on to San Diego

00:23:50.339 --> 00:23:53.799
South at Magnolia that accident clear to the right shoulder. We are clear back

00:23:53.799 --> 00:23:57.599
to the Westminster Mall with bumper-to-bumper through the beat cities. And you

00:23:57.619 --> 00:23:58.619
are going to be making your way on the 91 freeway--

00:23:58.619 --> 00:24:03.069
>> That moment actually has to be seen not just in terms of human history

00:24:03.089 --> 00:24:06.609
however brief human history is. It has to be seen in terms of geological time.

00:24:06.609 --> 00:24:13.619
Here you have the eons-old environment now being profoundly changed by the

00:24:13.639 --> 00:24:20.049
changing course of the river and that water in effect created contemporary Los

00:24:20.069 --> 00:24:24.409
Angeles.>> It's your earthquake damage repair at remodeling headquarters.

00:24:24.429 --> 00:24:28.549
>> This week get inaudible to Honolulu for only 199+ tax round-trip. Sun trips

00:24:28.569 --> 00:24:33.210
your pipeline to paradise. With air watch traffic--

00:24:33.230 --> 00:24:39.549
>> One of the big banquets in the city celebrating this great event he made a

00:24:39.569 --> 00:24:45.069
speech and made the very interesting observation he said we are doomed to

00:24:45.089 --> 00:24:53.769
success. Might be a motto for the city, do you think?

00:24:53.789 --> 00:25:00.441
>> When water came after 1913, it prepared for an absolute golden age of

00:25:00.461 --> 00:25:20.310
building and construction that lasted through-- Inaudible

00:25:20.330 --> 00:25:24.019
At one point in the early 20s there was some 67 lumber ships at the San Pedro

00:25:24.019 --> 00:25:27.460
Harbor lined up just waiting to get the wood off so they could keep the

00:25:27.460 --> 00:25:31.409
construction going. You also had the beginnings of the great Hollywood figures

00:25:31.429 --> 00:25:39.990
coming out-- DW Griffith, Cecil B DeMille coming just a few months after the

00:25:40.009 --> 00:25:47.269
water. At nowhere as you moved to Los Angeles were you not in the presence of

00:25:47.289 --> 00:25:55.009
lawns, hedges, palm trees-- great palm trees which sway above Los Angeles now

00:25:55.029 --> 00:25:59.529
like nodding giraffes are taken as the signature of the city. Palm trees were

00:25:59.549 --> 00:26:01.929
not native to the region they were planted by the hundreds in the hundreds in

00:26:01.929 --> 00:26:09.970
this era. Here you had a semi-arid region where coyotes roamed where tumbleweeds

00:26:09.990 --> 00:26:15.720
were blown by the wind which in a very short time was turned into arguably the

00:26:15.740 --> 00:26:20.849
most exquisite invented garden in history. Now if you link that with the

00:26:20.869 --> 00:26:26.679
adjacent citrus groves, which were still in full bloom in the teens and 20s, I

00:26:26.699 --> 00:26:33.849
wasn't there, but it must've been wonderful.>> You had a general sensibility of

00:26:33.869 --> 00:26:43.569
that time of turning the desert into and Eden.>> Charlie Chaplin and Alice

00:26:43.589 --> 00:26:48.299
Huxley came from England. William Faulkner from Mississippi. Frank Lloyd Wright

00:26:48.319 --> 00:27:04.250
from Wisconsin. Everyone came from everywhere.LA was suddenly growing 11 times

00:27:04.269 --> 00:27:14.970
faster than New York. Faster even than Calcutta. A million people by 1922 of

00:27:14.990 --> 00:27:17.319
whom 31,000 were licensed real estate agents. Now over Mulholland's objections,

00:27:17.319 --> 00:27:22.119
Los Angeles began annexing 52 surrounding communities. Soon the city limits

00:27:22.139 --> 00:27:28.370
would cover 400 mi.? more than any city in America.

00:27:28.390 --> 00:27:29.679
>> There are going to be a lot of irate citizens when they find out that they

00:27:29.679 --> 00:27:32.961
are paying for water that they are not going to get.

00:27:32.980 --> 00:27:37.530
>> Oh, that's all taken care of. See, Mr. Gitts phonetic, either you bring the

00:27:37.550 --> 00:27:47.789
water to LA or you bring LA to the water.>> What he simply meant was that you

00:27:47.809 --> 00:27:55.859
would bring the water to where you wanted to bring it and call that place LA and

00:27:55.879 --> 00:28:03.889
therefore you could get Los Angeles taxpayers to pay what in effect were a cabal

00:28:03.909 --> 00:28:11.039
of real estate speculators to have the city pay millions of dollars for them to

00:28:11.059 --> 00:28:14.799
pump water down to land that was not in fact part of the city and then cause

00:28:14.799 --> 00:28:19.200
them to vote that is part of the city and thereby increase the value of that

00:28:19.220 --> 00:28:26.389
land which they had purchased and held 1000 fold. So they were causing one city

00:28:26.409 --> 00:28:30.939
in effect to pay for them to develop another city by-- and then saying well,

00:28:30.959 --> 00:28:37.419
it's really same city.>> As the Owens River was finally being relocated across a

00:28:37.439 --> 00:28:44.429
quarter of the state of California, it became immediately obvious that there was

00:28:44.449 --> 00:28:49.929
way more water than Los Angeles needed. And so because the water was coming in

00:28:49.949 --> 00:28:54.439
to the San Fernando Valley, it ended up irrigating the San Fernando Valley. It

00:28:54.459 --> 00:29:00.049
was basically an artificial imported River for agriculture there rather than the

00:29:00.069 --> 00:29:03.379
agriculture that had been essentially put out of business in the Owens Valley.

00:29:03.399 --> 00:29:11.639
>> A syndicates arid tracks in the San Fernando Valley blossomed into orange and

00:29:11.659 --> 00:29:18.399
lemon groves, peach orchards, fields of winter tomatoes by 1920, LA County was

00:29:18.419 --> 00:29:26.220
the most productive farm county in America.>> It may have been legal, but move a

00:29:26.240 --> 00:29:31.909
whole River ostensibly for public good and end up making a bunch of capitalists

00:29:31.929 --> 00:29:36.889
even richer than they already were by giving them brand-new water supply was

00:29:36.909 --> 00:29:42.379
really a kind of a remarkable feat.>> They are conning LA into building it but

00:29:42.399 --> 00:29:45.169
the water is not going to go to LA.It's coming right here..

00:29:45.169 --> 00:29:50.389
>> What?>> Everything you can see. Everything around us. I was at the Hall of

00:29:50.409 --> 00:29:58.710
records today.>> The original title for Chinatown I actually had-- was going to

00:29:58.730 --> 00:30:05.759
call it water and power. Because you know that's what it came. And water was

00:30:05.779 --> 00:30:19.339
power. It was money. And those who knew how to manipulate it like much more

00:30:19.359 --> 00:30:22.099
directly than anybody could ever manipulate a stock market could make money off

00:30:22.099 --> 00:30:28.679
of it. And you could see it. It was a palpable thing. Running through your

00:30:28.699 --> 00:30:35.259
movie. You know? I mean just a river of greed.>> Do you have any idea what this

00:30:35.279 --> 00:30:40.730
land would be worth with the study water supply? About 30 million more than they

00:30:40.750 --> 00:30:46.970
paid for it.>> The syndicate began plowing under their newly developed San

00:30:46.990 --> 00:30:52.669
Fernando orange groves for tract homes. Advance guard of the largest subdivision

00:30:52.689 --> 00:30:59.049
in history. The value of their land had gone up tenfold.

00:30:59.069 --> 00:31:04.159
>> This is a great age of salesmanship. Because these were masters of the art of

00:31:04.179 --> 00:31:09.710
encouraging people to envision on an empty hillside the great cities, the towns,

00:31:09.730 --> 00:31:14.289
the schools, the churches, the synagogues, which would one day be there had they

00:31:14.309 --> 00:31:19.460
but the faith that the salesman had. Owning your own home in this region was

00:31:19.480 --> 00:31:23.619
given an almost quasi-religious value that your children would not be delinquent

00:31:23.639 --> 00:31:27.319
if you had a home. That your marriage would be happy but many of the ills of our

00:31:27.319 --> 00:31:32.950
society were due to the fact that people lived in cities and rented.

00:31:32.970 --> 00:31:37.549
>> Mulholland himself did not profit directly from the syndicates dealings but

00:31:37.569 --> 00:31:43.679
he was now the highest-paid public employee in California. The University of

00:31:43.699 --> 00:31:47.990
California gave an honorary degree to a doctor Mulholland the penniless

00:31:48.009 --> 00:31:52.109
immigrant who never finished grade school but could keep the entire LA water

00:31:52.129 --> 00:31:59.720
system in his head. LA now had a Mulholland school, Mulholland dam, Mulholland

00:31:59.740 --> 00:32:09.250
reservoir. And it named its new winding scenic drive the Mulholland Highway.

00:32:09.269 --> 00:32:12.719
>> Every kid in LA knew-- it was one of the first names you learned when you

00:32:12.719 --> 00:32:17.159
hit-- when you were old enough to get a junior operator's license because that's

00:32:17.179 --> 00:32:23.689
where you parked your car to make out. You know? So you know that's one

00:32:23.709 --> 00:32:28.819
association with Mulholland is where you took your girl.

00:32:28.839 --> 00:32:33.089
>> The men in the family that was a staple of conversation-- waterworks. There

00:32:33.109 --> 00:32:38.439
was always a Dodge to get the family to go out and it was usually either to see

00:32:38.459 --> 00:32:42.859
the wildflowers in the spring but it somehow always ended up that we were

00:32:42.879 --> 00:32:50.269
standing in front of some big turbine or waterworks and with the men discussing

00:32:50.289 --> 00:32:55.879
all of just the way you know I had to discuss impressionist paintings with a

00:32:55.899 --> 00:33:01.939
friend at the County Museum.>> The city which never had a reason to be now had

00:33:01.959 --> 00:33:08.230
1000 oil wells, its own automobile and airplane factories, and before long, 90%

00:33:08.250 --> 00:33:14.579
of all the worlds movies would be made in LA. The imported Owens River allow the

00:33:14.599 --> 00:33:18.939
city to expand and three times the rate Mulholland had used in his aqueduct

00:33:18.959 --> 00:33:24.929
calculations.>> It wasn't a prophet. He couldn't foresee that LA would grow the

00:33:24.949 --> 00:33:28.059
way it did.And that's what upset a lot of the balance.

00:33:28.059 --> 00:33:34.039
>> A inaudible committee tried to nominate William Mulholland for mayor. He said

00:33:34.059 --> 00:33:37.939
he would rather give birth to a porcupine backwards than the mayor of Los

00:33:37.959 --> 00:33:44.939
Angeles.>> It was a scramble. I mean the city kept growing and the Chamber of

00:33:44.959 --> 00:33:49.659
Commerce kept booming and there were all these marvelous come-ons from to the

00:33:49.679 --> 00:33:54.419
railroad companies and from the Chamber of Commerce and he used to joke and say

00:33:54.439 --> 00:33:58.449
that he thought the only thing that can stop LA from growing was to kill Frank

00:33:58.469 --> 00:34:03.490
Wiggins and Frank Wiggins was the president of the Chamber of Commerce who spent

00:34:03.509 --> 00:34:10.500
his lifetime booming LA all over the country. And encouraging more people and so

00:34:10.518 --> 00:34:16.590
it was a little bit like the sorcerer's apprentice. You start the process going

00:34:16.610 --> 00:34:20.659
and you got to have more water and more water and more water. And you, the

00:34:20.679 --> 00:34:25.500
father of the city's water system are supposed to continue to provide this

00:34:25.518 --> 00:34:29.900
water. It's a terrible place to be. And you've got to be ingenious and inventive

00:34:29.920 --> 00:34:38.289
and come up with new ideas for getting water.>> Now there were 60,000 realtors.

00:34:38.309 --> 00:34:42.500
The Chamber of Commerce sent millions of promotional brochures to the Midwest

00:34:42.518 --> 00:34:49.590
and New England to Guatemala City and Paris. Only 10 years after Mulholland

00:34:49.610 --> 00:34:54.949
finished his great aqueduct with a fourfold surplus, LA was running out of

00:34:54.969 --> 00:35:03.009
water. And he was pondering new sources.The Colorado, Mono Lake, or the Sierras.

00:35:03.029 --> 00:35:07.639
>> Maybe the best example of the metamorphosis of Mulholland into an obsessive

00:35:07.659 --> 00:35:15.429
water seeker was described to me by Horace Albright who was back in the 20s a

00:35:15.449 --> 00:35:19.610
superintendent at Yosemite national Park. And he was at a banquet table with

00:35:19.630 --> 00:35:26.179
Mulholland and Mulholland started waxing eloquent about how beautiful the valley

00:35:26.199 --> 00:35:31.329
is and then he said what he would do if he were in charge is he would send

00:35:31.349 --> 00:35:36.569
photographers into the valley and let them photograph all day long all night

00:35:36.589 --> 00:35:42.199
every season and just have the most astounding collection of Yosemite

00:35:42.219 --> 00:35:46.159
photographs that you could ever imagine. Put them in books and send them free to

00:35:46.179 --> 00:35:52.239
every library in the world and then he would go in there and build a great big

00:35:52.259 --> 00:36:22.259
dam and stop the God damned waste.>> Just to the north of Yosemite, late John

00:36:39.710 --> 00:36:48.460
Muir's beloved Hetch Hetchy Valley.Here, LA's rival San Francisco was in fact

00:36:48.480 --> 00:36:53.549
planning a dam which would soon permanently submerge Hetch Hetchy under 300 feet

00:36:53.569 --> 00:37:03.079
of water. Owens Valley had in fact gotten off easy compared to Hetch Hetchy.

00:37:03.099 --> 00:37:06.719
Mulholland's aqueduct had only dewatered the southern half of the valley.

00:37:06.739 --> 00:37:12.179
Leaving the northern towns and farms to flourish during World War I.

00:37:12.199 --> 00:37:15.819
>> Well, Owens Valley was an absolute you might say showplace. It produced

00:37:15.839 --> 00:37:21.150
fruit-- of the people from LA would go nuts over to get this fruit from here. I

00:37:21.170 --> 00:37:24.630
can remember when the sky would get black with flights of ducks. This was one of

00:37:24.630 --> 00:37:30.170
the major flyaways. Oh, absolutely black with them. I mean that. The sky would

00:37:30.190 --> 00:37:33.769
be black and even for a day or two or for hours and hours.

00:37:33.789 --> 00:37:40.929
>> It was a great time to live up here. It was a very close knit community. You

00:37:40.949 --> 00:37:42.289
know? Every Saturday night they would keep the opera house open all night and

00:37:42.289 --> 00:37:48.130
they would show the movie and when the movie was over they would push the chairs

00:37:48.150 --> 00:37:51.489
back and everybody would dance all night. Then they'd have a breakfast and

00:37:51.489 --> 00:37:54.739
everybody would go home back to their branches at sunup, you know? Did this

00:37:54.739 --> 00:38:07.659
every Saturday night and it was a great time to live in the Owens Valley.

00:38:07.679 --> 00:38:15.690
>> What few people knew was that William Mulholland was about to turn his

00:38:15.710 --> 00:38:22.670
attention to what remained of the Owens River.>> This growing city of Los

00:38:22.690 --> 00:38:29.259
Angeles becomes like a vampire making a direct connection to the major artery of

00:38:29.279 --> 00:38:34.079
the Owens Valley which is the Owens River. And of course imagine those ranchers

00:38:34.099 --> 00:38:37.839
who were initially told that Los Angeles would be their partner, their friend,

00:38:37.859 --> 00:38:41.539
that they would grow and prosperity along with the city began to see that the

00:38:41.539 --> 00:38:45.679
vampire was sucking the lifeblood and that their fertile fields were becoming

00:38:45.699 --> 00:38:52.469
parched and nonproductive.>> In the wet years since 1905, relations between the

00:38:52.489 --> 00:38:58.299
city and the Valley had been surprisingly cordial but now there was drought. The

00:38:58.319 --> 00:39:03.139
city sunk 52 turbine wells into the valley floor to pump groundwater into the

00:39:03.159 --> 00:39:07.449
aqueduct crippling surrounding ranches.>> What people resented here is they

00:39:07.469 --> 00:39:11.210
didn't have the option. They didn't have a choice. And the pressure that had

00:39:11.210 --> 00:39:15.150
built over 20 years and the inaudible was done and this whole water we're

00:39:15.170 --> 00:39:20.819
talking about they could care nothing about this property.

00:39:20.839 --> 00:39:25.199
>> On Sunday my mother would take me for drives and she would always talk about

00:39:25.219 --> 00:39:30.599
apple orchards and peach orchards. And it wasn't until years later that I

00:39:30.619 --> 00:39:34.000
realized because growing up in Bishop, there was always a-- we were surrounded

00:39:34.019 --> 00:39:39.279
by sagebrush. It was always dry. It was always dusty. There was always dust in

00:39:39.299 --> 00:39:43.589
the air. And I couldn't even imagine what my mother was talking about. I

00:39:43.609 --> 00:39:49.839
couldn't imagine. And it took me until a young adult to realize that it was much

00:39:49.859 --> 00:40:01.730
different at one time. I would have liked to have seen what my grandparents saw

00:40:01.750 --> 00:40:07.069
there. I'd like to see the green. I'd like to see the orchards. It must've been

00:40:07.089 --> 00:40:11.389
gorgeous. It must've been gorgeous. I mean I think that the Owens Valley is

00:40:11.409 --> 00:40:18.579
beautiful now. I grew up there. And is beautiful now. So can you imagine what it

00:40:18.599 --> 00:40:24.130
was like when my grandfather was there? When my great-grandfather was there? It

00:40:24.150 --> 00:40:36.269
could make me cry.>> Anger mounted as Mulholland's men cut ranchers canals. The

00:40:36.289 --> 00:40:41.449
city bought more land, siphoned off more and more water. Half the crops were

00:40:41.469 --> 00:40:48.000
gone by 1924.Schools and businesses began to close. Owens Lake went bone dry.

00:40:48.019 --> 00:41:00.199
Rumors of resistance began to fly. Someone blew a hole in the siphon. And then,

00:41:00.219 --> 00:41:05.480
just before Thanksgiving in 1924, the local bank president and 100 citizens

00:41:05.500 --> 00:41:13.670
seize the aqueduct. They opened the floodgates and sent the entire flow of the

00:41:13.690 --> 00:41:26.860
Owens River down a ditch and back into its ancient channel in the valley floor.

00:41:26.880 --> 00:41:30.949
>> They organized a caravan of these old model T's that drove I think probably

00:41:30.969 --> 00:41:37.159
dozens of cars down to the Alabama gates on the aqueduct where there was a

00:41:37.179 --> 00:41:39.779
turnout valve will they could basically stop the flow of water to Los Angeles.

00:41:39.779 --> 00:41:46.219
>> Talk about community involvement. I know that my grandfather was there. I

00:41:46.239 --> 00:41:51.960
have spoken recently with my mother's cousin and she said that she remembers

00:41:51.980 --> 00:41:58.360
that it was a party that her mother got her up early and got her dressed up and

00:41:58.380 --> 00:42:06.460
she was only four. So, there was a-- I me that was a great step and those people

00:42:06.480 --> 00:42:12.900
didn't move from the Alabama gates. They didn't move. That took a lot of

00:42:12.920 --> 00:42:13.920
courage. That did.Inaudible>> There wasn't any guns involved. There wasn't that

00:42:13.920 --> 00:42:24.759
type of thing. There'd only been a inaudible from there and he was sympathetic

00:42:24.779 --> 00:42:33.159
to his inaudible if you will.So there was a whole bunch of oh, arbitration but

00:42:33.179 --> 00:42:44.009
discussion but interest focused on this thing is mainly what they were after.

00:42:44.029 --> 00:42:45.809
>> The crowd grew to 700 picnicking, singing Onward Christian Soldiers, playing

00:42:45.809 --> 00:42:57.789
Enrico Caruso on a hand cranked phonograph. Superintendent Mulholland sent city

00:42:57.809 --> 00:43:27.809
police to take back the water but the local sheriff stood between the officers

00:43:28.679 --> 00:43:30.500
and the citizens.>> This news did travel around the world. This was a great big

00:43:30.500 --> 00:43:36.230
story at the time. And it was embarrassing for Los Angeles. Because they were

00:43:36.250 --> 00:43:46.949
being cast as the villain. And you know it was hard to see that any other way.

00:43:46.969 --> 00:43:51.909
>> Mulholland saw this as number one an instance of civil insurrection but saw

00:43:51.929 --> 00:43:56.179
that nothing less than the survival of Los Angeles itself was at stake and that

00:43:56.199 --> 00:44:02.219
basically that had to be a cleansing of farmers from that region. That the two

00:44:02.239 --> 00:44:06.779
communities were incompatible. And that they would have to be bought out.

00:44:06.799 --> 00:44:10.619
>> And so they decided to try to sit down with some of the leaders of the Owens

00:44:10.619 --> 00:44:16.549
Valley and negotiate some kind of a settlement.>> After week, the local bank

00:44:16.569 --> 00:44:20.769
president told the Raiders that a Los Angeles consortium would negotiate a fair

00:44:20.789 --> 00:44:25.779
price for the remaining water rights in Owens Valley. LA would even consider

00:44:25.799 --> 00:44:30.969
sharing the water. With cheers and congratulations, the ranchers and their

00:44:30.989 --> 00:44:36.719
families went home. Only to learn later that the deal had fallen through.

00:44:36.739 --> 00:44:43.119
>> As these negotiations such as they were are going on, the city is busily

00:44:43.139 --> 00:44:48.769
buying more rights, land and water rights in the Valley. Basically buying the

00:44:48.789 --> 00:44:55.400
whole place up.>> While ranchers occupied the aqueduct, city agents had secured

00:44:55.420 --> 00:44:59.699
legal options on virtually all remaining land and water rights in Owens Valley.

00:44:59.719 --> 00:45:08.769
They bought whole towns. Even the county seat and County jail.

00:45:08.789 --> 00:45:15.059
>> More trouble. And it's not the first time either. The last bombing was four

00:45:15.079 --> 00:45:20.710
years ago and ranchers objecting to the city cutting across their property are

00:45:20.730 --> 00:45:26.909
suspected. It's one of the main line pipes about 150 miles north of Los Angeles

00:45:26.929 --> 00:45:31.469
that supplies water to the big town. It's a lucky Los Angeles has an emergency

00:45:31.489 --> 00:45:36.909
watershed or this might have resulted in a terrible drought disaster. The police

00:45:36.929 --> 00:45:41.179
are after the fiends who did this rotten job let's hope they get them. There is

00:45:41.179 --> 00:45:51.119
no punishment too strong for them.>> They received a phone call and this is like

00:45:51.139 --> 00:45:56.349
telling Leonardo da Vinci that someone has just slashed the Mona Lisa. I mean he

00:45:56.369 --> 00:46:08.849
was just appalled outraged and furious and at that point, a certain ugly turn of

00:46:08.869 --> 00:46:15.449
events occurred. The mood changed.>> Now, night after night, saboteurs dynamited

00:46:15.469 --> 00:46:20.170
Mulholland's masterwork. The great aqueduct inaudible

00:46:20.190 --> 00:46:30.529
>> They had numerous stories about my grandfather taking off and blowing up

00:46:30.549 --> 00:46:39.079
dynamiting the aqueduct. It took great pride in the fact of that the many raids

00:46:39.099 --> 00:46:43.679
to blow up the aqueduct.>> They would go along and dynamite sections and then

00:46:43.699 --> 00:46:48.009
they'd go right off back up into the hills, would camp out for weeks and weeks

00:46:48.029 --> 00:46:53.279
and weeks after they had bombed it they were afraid to come home and have them

00:46:53.299 --> 00:46:58.480
have their wives and kids had to basically hold family and Fort together.

00:46:58.500 --> 00:47:03.920
>> The city named three women and 15 men as ringleaders. But could never win a

00:47:03.940 --> 00:47:08.960
single conviction.>> They were heroes you know in your own mind. You know, those

00:47:08.980 --> 00:47:13.259
guys are great for what they did and everything. But we always thought that you

00:47:13.279 --> 00:47:16.789
wish we'd been there if we were kids, you know, but--

00:47:16.809 --> 00:47:22.109
>> Interestingly enough, then he went on to be a California State Sen. So he

00:47:22.129 --> 00:47:26.349
wasn't a crazy man. He was just a man on a mission and a purpose.

00:47:26.369 --> 00:47:35.139
>> Mulholland and his colleagues said look, this can't go on. This is-- you are

00:47:35.159 --> 00:47:41.889
threatening the water supply for a great city. This is criminal. And they sent

00:47:41.909 --> 00:47:46.670
machine guns up there and it stopped.>> Train loads of them were going up to the

00:47:46.690 --> 00:47:50.769
Owens Valley and basically imposing martial law. There were searchlights and

00:47:50.789 --> 00:47:57.429
floodlights up and down that Valley sweeping across the aqueduct all night long.

00:47:57.449 --> 00:48:02.239
>> Mulholland sent 600 heavily armed police to secure the city's water supply.

00:48:02.259 --> 00:48:07.920
Backed by the full force of state and federal law, endorsed by the Chamber of

00:48:07.940 --> 00:48:16.389
Commerce.>> As Jean Renoir said, everyone has his reasons. And I'm sure he had

00:48:16.409 --> 00:48:22.869
his reasons and he justified it because he had to. I can see how it would've

00:48:22.889 --> 00:48:27.639
been very easy to get carried away by powerful men saying see what you can do

00:48:27.659 --> 00:48:32.380
for the city. You know? What a great man you will be. You know?

00:48:32.400 --> 00:48:39.549
>> When I was a kid, you know, he was a bad guy. He was the guy with the black

00:48:39.569 --> 00:48:44.319
hat. He was-- we all hated him, you know? I mean we all talked about a lot and

00:48:44.339 --> 00:48:50.730
you know what evil guy he was, but he had a fantastic vision but he didn't care

00:48:50.750 --> 00:48:54.089
who he stepped over to get it. He didn't care what happened to the Owens Valley.

00:48:54.089 --> 00:48:57.989
>> I would say that when I was a little girl it was not good to be a Mulholland

00:48:57.989 --> 00:49:04.170
in Owens Valley and I was never taken there and my folks if they should chance

00:49:04.190 --> 00:49:09.579
to travel my mother told me they always registered at a hotel using her maiden

00:49:09.599 --> 00:49:17.150
name. Because we were just not well liked in Owens Valley and it was not a good

00:49:17.170 --> 00:49:23.859
name to carry.>> Well, Mulholland was a very honest man. Because he said that

00:49:23.879 --> 00:49:28.889
everyone in Bishop was a son of a bitch and that there wasn't enough pine trees

00:49:28.909 --> 00:49:33.599
to hang the natives on which they deserved whereas the rest of them they went

00:49:33.619 --> 00:49:38.059
with the protocol and with inaudible and so on but not Mulholland.

00:49:38.079 --> 00:49:44.170
>> He knew that it was a vein hope I mean to think that they could go back I

00:49:44.190 --> 00:49:50.489
mean the water had been taken. It was the fait accompli. There was no turning

00:49:50.509 --> 00:49:56.000
back. Owens Valley was not going to be reverted back to what it had been in

00:49:56.019 --> 00:50:01.289
1905. That deed had been done.>> Somebody did put up a sign and that said Los

00:50:01.309 --> 00:50:07.009
Angeles city limits way out in the Owens Valley as kind of a bitter joke. It was

00:50:07.029 --> 00:50:11.859
really than everyone knew William Mulholland had triumphed. He had one the

00:50:11.879 --> 00:50:18.000
Valley was really his.>> Before long, city bulldozers began knocking down

00:50:18.019 --> 00:50:25.799
farmhouses and feeling and irrigation ditches.>> Well first we had the Valley

00:50:25.819 --> 00:50:29.399
then the sellers came in and took away from us in the city of Los Angeles came

00:50:29.399 --> 00:50:43.529
and they took it away from them.>> All Mulholland needed now was a place to

00:50:43.549 --> 00:50:49.480
store water for the growing city.But former LA Mayor Fred Eaton owned the only

00:50:49.500 --> 00:50:53.980
reservoir site in Owens Valley.And was demanding $1 million for it. So

00:50:54.000 --> 00:51:01.219
Mulholland build a huge dam in the hills just 40 miles from downtown LA. It was

00:51:01.239 --> 00:51:06.279
the largest arch support dam in North America. The final link in a decade of

00:51:06.299 --> 00:51:13.480
triumph. By the spring of 1928, the reservoir in San Francisquito Canyon was a

00:51:13.500 --> 00:51:18.109
full to the brim with a year's supply of Owens River water. Far from the scene

00:51:18.129 --> 00:51:24.949
of battle. On March 12, workers noticed a small leak on the north side.

00:51:24.969 --> 00:51:32.529
Mulholland inspected the leak pronounced the dam sound and went home to bed.

00:51:32.549 --> 00:51:39.440
>> My grandfather was awakened from his sleep with a phone call saying the dam

00:51:39.460 --> 00:51:47.449
had gone out. And his first response was he stumbled toward the phone was oh

00:51:47.469 --> 00:52:00.739
please God don't let people be killed.>> There was no warning. There was no

00:52:00.759 --> 00:52:08.699
warning system. And it started wiping out whole communities.

00:52:08.719 --> 00:52:19.139
>> You had so much water in that dam. That there were 1000 ton blocks of

00:52:19.159 --> 00:52:26.650
concrete riding the crest. It was not water at a certain point. It was trees,

00:52:26.670 --> 00:52:36.629
homes, blocks of concrete, rocks, rubble. It was a semisolid wall advancing at

00:52:36.649 --> 00:52:53.619
20 or 30 miles an hour 40 and 50, 60 feet high. You couldn't run from it.

00:52:53.639 --> 00:53:06.619
>> I was five years old when the St. Francis dam broke. And with my limited

00:53:06.639 --> 00:53:11.079
perceptions I realized some dreadful thing. It was like bringing a dark curtain

00:53:11.099 --> 00:53:20.400
down over a lighted area. My father took me-- he was-- my father was stunned and

00:53:20.420 --> 00:53:26.299
he took me in the car. My mother was not well at the time. And we drove up to

00:53:26.319 --> 00:53:33.710
the dam site and on the way up, he taught me how to say San Francisquito Canyon

00:53:33.730 --> 00:53:38.929
and we rehearsed it over and over as if it were some kind of a catechism lesson

00:53:38.949 --> 00:53:46.289
of what it did for me was imprint that name forever in my mind as a scene of

00:53:46.309 --> 00:53:55.489
some terrible fate which had befallen our family.

00:53:55.509 --> 00:54:08.429
>> Mulholland surveyed the greatest man-made disaster in California history. His

00:54:08.449 --> 00:54:38.449
St. Francis dam had killed as many people as the San Francisco earthquake.

00:54:39.139 --> 00:54:44.529
>> I've always been moved all my life at the pictures that were taken of in the

00:54:44.549 --> 00:54:52.379
morning that he was-- went up and surveyed the ruins of the dam failure. It's

00:54:52.399 --> 00:54:59.389
like looking at the most stricken human being I've ever seen. It's a dead stark

00:54:59.409 --> 00:55:04.849
look at his on his face as he stands amid the rubble of something he had

00:55:04.869 --> 00:55:11.009
created. It was an engineer's most horrible fate any engineer could have to

00:55:11.029 --> 00:55:21.359
build a structure that fails and also kills.>> So Mulholland was in a state of

00:55:21.379 --> 00:55:28.420
shock. He made an initial effort really. It wasn't much of an effort-- to blame

00:55:28.440 --> 00:55:31.500
the whole thing on dynamiters phonetic which was the term he now used

00:55:31.500 --> 00:55:35.199
generically to refer to anybody in the Owens Valley.

00:55:35.219 --> 00:55:40.989
But it was soon very obvious that the dam had failed by itself and nobody had

00:55:41.009 --> 00:55:48.309
sabotaged it and that Mulholland had paid a visit to the dam just hours earlier

00:55:48.329 --> 00:55:55.609
and said that the dam was fine. So his reputation which had-- he had been a God

00:55:55.629 --> 00:56:02.159
figure in Los Angeles.>> Mulholland went from being of the father of the city,

00:56:02.179 --> 00:56:17.529
the founder of the city to standing possible indictment.

00:56:17.549 --> 00:56:23.769
>> The precise cause was never found. No criminal charges were ever filed, but

00:56:23.789 --> 00:56:30.059
the coroner's jury held William Mulholland responsible. He accepted the blame.

00:56:30.079 --> 00:56:33.309
Broke down in sobs and said that he envied the dead.

00:56:33.329 --> 00:56:51.089
>> They kept slowly taking away the water from the canals and the ditches and

00:56:51.109 --> 00:56:55.309
everything slowly but surely they got everything siphoned down and so the land

00:56:55.329 --> 00:57:00.319
of the trees and the whole form says they all died off and all the old orchards

00:57:00.339 --> 00:57:02.759
died off and they are all gone now all the houses are all gone. So they just

00:57:02.759 --> 00:57:11.899
turned back into a desert as it was, basically.>> When we traveled to Los

00:57:11.919 --> 00:57:16.009
Angeles we watched the aqueduct. My parents would

00:57:16.029 --> 00:57:23.539
always say, there is our water. Girls, that water came from the Owens Valley.

00:57:23.559 --> 00:57:31.719
And as a child I remember feeling animosity towards Los Angeles. You always

00:57:31.739 --> 00:57:38.809
knew. He always felt that they took our water.>> Mulholland resigned in

00:57:38.829 --> 00:57:43.710
disgrace. His real achievements clouded by the disaster and by the suffering in

00:57:43.730 --> 00:57:49.239
Owens Valley. His plans for still greater aqueducts lay on the drawing board but

00:57:49.259 --> 00:57:54.119
to the people of LA he was an embarrassment. Officials began referring to the

00:57:54.139 --> 00:58:02.039
Mulholland reservoir as the Hollywood reservoir. Owens Valley was history but

00:58:02.059 --> 00:58:06.539
fantasy and folklore lived on.The myth of rampaging bullies destroying a

00:58:06.559 --> 00:58:10.009
paradise, gallant ranchers defending their homes.>> These gentlemen bring word

00:58:10.029 --> 00:58:14.559
from the capital. The inaudible Valley has been condemned.

00:58:14.579 --> 00:58:18.940
>> Condemned?>> What do you mean?>> It seems that Metripol phonetic City needs

00:58:18.960 --> 00:58:23.960
more water and power. So the state has decided to build a dam across cut stone

00:58:23.980 --> 00:58:28.059
Canyon and turn the Valley into a reservoir.>> Just let them start trying to

00:58:28.079 --> 00:58:32.629
build a dam around here.>> The state authorized me to build a dam. And it's

00:58:32.649 --> 00:58:38.349
going to be built whether you like it or not.>> Take it easy, you don't know the

00:58:38.369 --> 00:58:54.489
kind of people you're dealing with, Mister.>> But he will find out.

00:58:54.509 --> 00:58:59.589
>> In 1934 using Mulholland's original plans, the Metropolitan water District

00:58:59.609 --> 00:59:03.980
lasted a new aqueduct all the way to the Arizona State line to its second River,

00:59:04.000 --> 00:59:14.659
the Colorado.>> Unless we take immediate steps to bring in water from an outside

00:59:14.679 --> 00:59:20.029
source, the people of Southern California will be up against a serious water

00:59:20.049 --> 00:59:24.670
shortage. But we are fortunate in having within our reach a water source capable

00:59:24.690 --> 00:59:31.170
of supplying our needs. This source is the Colorado River.

00:59:31.190 --> 00:59:35.869
Inaudible>> The governor of Arizona deployed his state militia to the river's

00:59:35.889 --> 00:59:44.629
bank to stop Los Angeles from taking Colorado River water.

00:59:44.649 --> 00:59:57.839
>> It was to no avail.>> Final resolution would not come until 30 years later

00:59:57.859 --> 01:00:01.309
after one of the longest court cases in American history.

01:00:01.329 --> 01:00:05.809
>> On the day when the waters of the Colorado River rushes into this aqueduct

01:00:05.829 --> 01:00:12.029
the greatest engineering feat of its kind ever accomplished will take its place

01:00:12.049 --> 01:00:18.569
among the wonders of the world.>> It is a wonderful thing to contemplate this

01:00:18.589 --> 01:00:24.369
new conquest of the great Southwest were everything that man desires is

01:00:24.389 --> 01:00:29.969
present. Everything except sufficient water. With sufficient water we can be

01:00:29.989 --> 01:00:37.969
assured of a great and a stable civilization.>> Wow. What a day. I'm afraid

01:00:37.989 --> 01:00:43.250
we're going to be busy. Hi, Greg. It was a high-speed pursuit earlier this

01:00:43.269 --> 01:00:46.469
morning. They have the San Bernardino westbound on and off ramps at Atlantic

01:00:46.469 --> 01:01:08.670
closed down because of a police investigation.Bumper to bumper to Puente.

01:01:08.690 --> 01:01:10.269
Foreign Language Spoken>> -- we'd like to welcome you all aboard Universal

01:01:10.269 --> 01:01:13.379
Studios Hollywood super trim presented by Texaco. Oh, yeah. Uh-oh. I think I

01:01:13.379 --> 01:01:27.940
hear something. It might get a little bit wet.>> Hey, watch out for that tree

01:01:27.960 --> 01:01:36.920
back there!>> He brought enough elements together, water, population, wealth so

01:01:36.940 --> 01:01:43.579
that Los Angeles was now almost condemned to grow and grow and grow.

01:01:43.599 --> 01:01:55.440
>> So after the 1920s, Los Angeles' history is almost defined by an obsessive

01:01:55.460 --> 01:02:02.549
constant search for more and more water. Hoover dam was authorized in 1928,

01:02:02.569 --> 01:02:09.829
finished by the mid-30s then Mono Lake which is north of the Owens Valley was

01:02:09.849 --> 01:02:13.839
hooked up to the aqueduct. And began draining all the streams that feed this

01:02:13.859 --> 01:02:20.029
irreplaceable natural wonder out there.>> Mulholland had long had his eye on

01:02:20.049 --> 01:02:26.009
Mono Lake, 100 miles north of Owens Valley. In 1936, his successors dusted off

01:02:26.029 --> 01:02:31.449
his plans and pushed the aqueduct north to mono seeking again the greatest good

01:02:31.469 --> 01:02:35.039
for the greatest number.>> People really shouldn't have any problem with our

01:02:35.059 --> 01:02:40.339
water system and take it for granted or the water people are doing their job

01:02:40.359 --> 01:02:46.629
well. I always felt that I was working for a good purpose. I wasn't doing

01:02:46.649 --> 01:02:53.929
something that in my view really didn't basically benefit society. I felt that I

01:02:53.949 --> 01:02:58.789
was working on something that was a fundamental benefit to society. I was proud

01:02:58.809 --> 01:03:04.389
of that.>> The people of LA could not depend on water from ancient streams

01:03:04.409 --> 01:03:16.009
feeding Mono Lake.>> This is the desert. This is the grim waterless waste that

01:03:16.029 --> 01:03:20.250
covered most of Los Angeles even within the memory of living men. Here between

01:03:20.269 --> 01:03:21.329
the mountains and the sea, Los Angeles was built. Here is a living breathing

01:03:21.329 --> 01:03:25.960
proof that energy and vision can build a metropolis almost overnight. Angelenos

01:03:25.980 --> 01:03:33.359
phonetic are likely to live on a ranch still within city limits. Perhaps a few

01:03:33.379 --> 01:03:37.299
years ago they were residents of Iowa, Illinois, New Jersey. Here they quickly

01:03:37.319 --> 01:03:41.769
abandon old conventions of inaudible. Dress as they please make the most of

01:03:41.789 --> 01:03:48.099
their mild seductive climate. The inaudible introduction to this promised land

01:03:48.119 --> 01:03:55.480
of exotic people, sunshine, stucco, money, optimism. Success is her pattern.

01:03:55.500 --> 01:04:09.699
This is LA.This is America.>> The rise of Nazis in Germany and the fleeing of

01:04:09.719 --> 01:04:10.939
all that talent have the creation of a euro Southern California. Otto Preminger

01:04:10.939 --> 01:04:13.719
who was of course fleeing the Nazis was at the Hillcrest country club and people

01:04:13.719 --> 01:04:16.619
playing cards and people were talking. And these two people started talking in

01:04:16.619 --> 01:04:22.029
Hungarian and they were talking white Hungarian phonetic. Otto Preminger said,

01:04:22.049 --> 01:04:23.569
what's the matter, he says, why are you talking in Hungarian? This is Los

01:04:23.569 --> 01:04:39.000
Angeles. He said, talk German.>> From Berlin, New York, Alabama, from all over

01:04:39.019 --> 01:04:45.889
the world people flooded into Southern California. They said it was just like

01:04:45.909 --> 01:04:57.559
everyone else only more so.>> There was a new paradise. It's something like--

01:04:57.579 --> 01:05:01.349
you know love and good health. You really miss it by its absence very often. I

01:05:01.349 --> 01:05:06.929
mean it just wasn't aware-- I was never aware growing up, but how wonderful it

01:05:06.949 --> 01:05:20.629
was until it was gone and that was the air itself. The air was wonderful. If you

01:05:20.649 --> 01:05:28.299
stop and think about the mean temperature of the climate here year-round, it's

01:05:28.319 --> 01:05:33.419
probably the most perfect climate to you know, sort of walk around and with

01:05:33.439 --> 01:05:48.440
almost no clothing because the air you just feel that is almost an extension of

01:05:48.460 --> 01:05:49.460
your own skin. It doesn't-- it's not too hot, it's not too cold.

01:05:49.460 --> 01:05:51.579
>> The machinery of water acquisition overworked the Owens River, the Colorado,

01:05:51.599 --> 01:05:58.559
and the Mono basin. In 1964, the Metropolitan water District proposed diverting

01:05:58.579 --> 01:06:03.359
the Columbia River to Southern California. The future had arrived.

01:06:03.379 --> 01:06:08.629
>> Somebody finally decided rather than just go after another source of water

01:06:08.649 --> 01:06:13.250
every 10 or 20 years, why don't we go to where there's so much water we will

01:06:13.250 --> 01:06:19.039
have enough for 200 years. And where was that place? Alaska. It would have

01:06:19.059 --> 01:06:25.449
brought this water down in huge jolts, irrigated Nevada, irrigated Eastern

01:06:25.469 --> 01:06:28.429
Oregon on the way. Some of it would've gone all the way to Mexico. It was going

01:06:28.429 --> 01:06:33.569
to go to Arizona, it was going to go to Texas.>> Nobody really blinked. There

01:06:33.589 --> 01:06:37.029
were lots of people in the business who thought well, yeah. It's maybe a little

01:06:37.029 --> 01:06:39.689
premature, but this is going to happen someday because it has to.

01:06:39.689 --> 01:06:47.469
>> This is not a mirage. But rather a preview of an atomic Marvel of tomorrow. A

01:06:47.489 --> 01:06:53.079
milestone in man's development. A nuclear powered Agro industrial complex. With

01:06:53.099 --> 01:06:58.559
a nuclear reactor as the energy source, and a D salting plant as the fresh water

01:06:58.579 --> 01:07:03.699
source, the desert may be transformed into a nuclear powered Agro industrial

01:07:03.719 --> 01:07:11.980
complex.>> There were plans to last so you know icebergs and tell them down. You

01:07:12.000 --> 01:07:18.679
know,it was like the flimflam man. I mean there was no end to these people who

01:07:18.699 --> 01:07:27.919
had plans to dam San Francisco Bay, to pipelines beyond your wildest dreams.

01:07:27.939 --> 01:07:32.199
These-- and this wasn't about carrying oil. This was about carrying water. This

01:07:32.219 --> 01:07:38.779
is water.>> When these reactors are coupled to a desalting plant, approximately

01:07:38.799 --> 01:07:41.960
1 billion gallons of fresh water will be produced per day.

01:07:41.980 --> 01:07:51.379
>> Of course at the time, nobody was challenging the idea of using 8 gallons of

01:07:51.399 --> 01:07:59.019
water per flush in a toilet. Or irrigating your lawn to the point where it's

01:07:59.039 --> 01:08:03.039
standing an inch deep in water. Nobody thought about conservation. People only

01:08:03.059 --> 01:08:08.210
thought about supply.>> The city had long since exhausted supply from the tiny

01:08:08.230 --> 01:08:16.988
Los Angeles River and cemented over its channel by 1960. The DWP built a

01:08:17.010 --> 01:08:20.569
reservoir to store supply of Owens River water near the center of Los Angeles.

01:08:20.590 --> 01:08:23.609
>> The Los Angeles city police helicopter is here. The Los Angeles city fire

01:08:23.609 --> 01:08:31.269
department helicopters here. The police are on the ground with motorcycles and

01:08:31.288 --> 01:08:35.969
automobiles. Trying to effectively activate people from here so there can't

01:08:35.988 --> 01:08:42.029
possibly be any more loss of life than there is. Property no telling how much

01:08:42.050 --> 01:08:49.519
property has already been lost.>> A triangle shaped wedge tears out of the

01:08:49.538 --> 01:08:50.679
asphalt and concrete lined wall of the earth-filled phonetic dam of the Baldwin

01:08:50.679 --> 01:08:51.679
Hills reservoir. And millions of gallons of water raced down the canyon toward

01:08:51.679 --> 01:08:53.429
the homes below in the community between downtown Los Angeles and International

01:08:53.429 --> 01:09:08.828
Airport. Almost 300 million gallons of water in 77 minutes. An incredible

01:09:08.849 --> 01:09:20.359
disaster.>> The Department of water and power had no choice but to carry on

01:09:20.380 --> 01:09:29.109
since it now served 3 million people. In 1966, LA acquired its third River like

01:09:29.130 --> 01:09:33.109
a giant version of Mulholland's Owens Valley project, the California State

01:09:33.130 --> 01:09:37.849
aqueducts now brought the Feather River from 600 miles north. Enough water to

01:09:37.868 --> 01:09:46.559
fill the Rose Bowl every 90 minutes.>> Los Angeles by the 70s was reaching 200

01:09:46.578 --> 01:09:51.759
miles in one direction, 250 miles in another direction and 600 miles in a third

01:09:51.779 --> 01:10:01.209
direction. For water. And it still wasn't enough.>> In 1970 the Department of

01:10:01.229 --> 01:10:05.689
water and power using Mulholland's original sketches finished the second

01:10:05.710 --> 01:10:16.959
barrel, a parallel aqueduct not far from the original. Sucking now twice as much

01:10:16.979 --> 01:10:18.329
water from Mono Lake. The million year old Lake now fell 2 feet every year. It

01:10:18.329 --> 01:10:24.819
was the only stop for a million migrating seabirds on their way from the Arctic

01:10:24.840 --> 01:10:31.149
to Bolivia.>> You could see the lake going down and down and down. Pretty soon

01:10:31.170 --> 01:10:33.849
it it was not even growing around the lake anymore. Everything was drying up all

01:10:33.849 --> 01:10:41.129
the little springs were dying. You know. That was really devastating because we

01:10:41.149 --> 01:10:47.149
thought the whole Lake is going to be like this. And when you think of God's

01:10:47.170 --> 01:10:51.209
given like you think it should be like it was.>> The local people had already

01:10:51.229 --> 01:10:54.809
resigned themselves to the fact that the lake was going to dry up or get to a

01:10:54.809 --> 01:11:05.819
very small level. Just because of the adversary Department of water and power is

01:11:05.840 --> 01:11:07.139
too big to fight. It was not anything that anybody can do.

01:11:07.139 --> 01:11:11.529
>> Great alkali dust storms began boiling up off the exposed shores of Mono and

01:11:11.550 --> 01:11:17.489
the dry bed of Owens Lake. By 1974, Owens Valley the Switzerland of America had

01:11:17.510 --> 01:11:24.349
the worst particulate pollution in the country.>> The sense that somehow LA had

01:11:24.369 --> 01:11:32.209
sinned against another people became a central imagery in this whole water

01:11:32.229 --> 01:11:35.629
story. And one that I've always had a lot of trouble

01:11:35.649 --> 01:11:41.509
with. Because I've always sympathized with the underdog but at the same time

01:11:41.529 --> 01:11:45.889
I've been proud of my grandfather so it's given me a great deal of conflict to

01:11:45.889 --> 01:11:51.589
have to come to terms with that.>> Why are you doing it? How much better can you

01:11:51.609 --> 01:11:54.359
eat? What can you buy that you can't already afford?

01:11:54.369 --> 01:12:00.379
>> The future, Mr. Gibbs. The future.>> And the crimes that they committed in

01:12:00.399 --> 01:12:06.529
the name of the future, against the future is really the history of water in

01:12:06.550 --> 01:12:15.445
California here in LA. I mean it's-- it's just the supreme irony.

01:12:15.465 --> 01:12:19.409
>> See, Mr. Gibbs, most people never have to face the fact that at the right

01:12:19.429 --> 01:12:24.269
time and the right place they are capable of anything.

01:12:24.289 --> 01:12:29.499
>> Sometimes they are so monstrous that they can't figure out how to punish them

01:12:29.519 --> 01:12:35.489
so they actually sort of reward them. And inaudible name is on the scenic route

01:12:35.510 --> 01:12:42.379
of the city and inaudible of those names are on plaques as city founders. Rather

01:12:42.399 --> 01:12:48.819
than in jail where they belonged.>> When I think of a movie like Chinatown as an

01:12:48.840 --> 01:12:55.009
easy out it oversimplifies it's melodramatic. It's not true I may not literally

01:12:55.029 --> 01:13:03.409
not true. But it provides a rather easy explanation of events and for people who

01:13:03.429 --> 01:13:15.309
like to bash LA is perfect.New York Times loves to hold it up as a piece of

01:13:15.329 --> 01:13:20.679
history.>> The movie Chinatown was bad at contorted history but it was powerful

01:13:20.699 --> 01:13:26.179
myth.Rekindling violence against the Department of water and power. Now

01:13:26.199 --> 01:13:31.579
headquartered in a building that cost as much as Mulholland's original aqueduct.

01:13:31.599 --> 01:13:37.329
>> There was violence here before a long time ago back in 1924 angry farmers and

01:13:37.349 --> 01:13:42.849
ranchers lined the wall armed with shotguns and rifles. They blew holes in the

01:13:42.869 --> 01:13:48.559
aqueduct 17 times. This year it took this form a dynamite blast at the gates of

01:13:48.579 --> 01:13:54.099
the first aqueduct the water for Los Angeles stopped briefly instead--

01:13:54.119 --> 01:13:58.469
>> Resistance was futile. The Department of water and power by now had more

01:13:58.489 --> 01:14:03.529
manpower than the population of Bishop more in fact than the entire population

01:14:03.550 --> 01:14:10.149
of Owens Valley. But this time something had changed. David Gaines a young

01:14:10.170 --> 01:14:14.929
biologist from LA and a dozen University of California students had begun a

01:14:14.949 --> 01:14:20.429
careful study of Mono Lake's singular ecosystem. They found it on the brink of

01:14:20.449 --> 01:14:27.609
collapse.>> We knew about Owens like of course. Now it's just a dry ditch you

01:14:27.630 --> 01:14:31.389
know 100 miles to the south. We realized that Mono Lake could look like that

01:14:31.409 --> 01:14:36.649
someday and once we realized both here, that all that would be lost we couldn't

01:14:36.670 --> 01:14:42.549
let it just go down without making some effort to save it.

01:14:42.569 --> 01:14:48.579
>> By 1976, Mono Lake had fallen 40 feet. Exposing mineral towers which had

01:14:48.599 --> 01:14:56.129
formed underwater over the ages. It had become three times saltier than the

01:14:56.149 --> 01:14:59.849
ocean.>> What we are asking what Mono Lake is asking all of us is where we going

01:14:59.849 --> 01:15:04.509
to draw the line? If we don't share some water with Mono Lake will be next? Will

01:15:04.529 --> 01:15:09.709
it be like Tahoe, will be the Eagle River? The Yukon? Will it be on and on until

01:15:09.729 --> 01:15:13.569
the last of our singing rivers and beautiful lakes are gone because we've taken

01:15:13.590 --> 01:15:19.399
every last drop we watched the last waterfall and the last salmon follow the

01:15:19.420 --> 01:15:24.469
California State emblem the California grizzly into oblivion? It is a

01:15:24.489 --> 01:15:28.519
battleground in that sense. It's asking us how much are we going to share with

01:15:28.539 --> 01:15:36.249
the Earth?>> Well it was very primitive. I mean there was 12 people only one or

01:15:36.269 --> 01:15:40.769
two cars everybody else did their research via bicycle. They did take their

01:15:40.789 --> 01:15:44.309
binoculars and their backpack and their lunch and then hop on their bikes and

01:15:44.329 --> 01:15:48.329
they'd ride down the dirt roads and dump their bikes and hike out for a couple

01:15:48.329 --> 01:15:55.689
miles and then walk through mud and you know they were really the quintessential

01:15:55.710 --> 01:16:00.459
researchers out there braving the elements.>> All those college boys come over

01:16:00.479 --> 01:16:04.729
they all want to look like professors you know they got big beers you know and

01:16:04.750 --> 01:16:11.029
so Mr. Gaines he was one of them. You know?And he looked just like the rest of

01:16:11.050 --> 01:16:15.619
them. You know? Kind of like a hippie I'd say but I don't want to say you know

01:16:15.619 --> 01:16:22.059
he wasn't a hippie but he looked that way.But he was pretty smart that guy. He

01:16:22.079 --> 01:16:27.769
would start a thing going-->> When I grew up in Los Angeles I never learned

01:16:27.789 --> 01:16:33.009
where water came from. And it was only after doing some complex calculations

01:16:33.029 --> 01:16:38.279
that we learned that if diversions continued this Lake will fall another 40 to

01:16:38.300 --> 01:16:44.869
60 vertical feet. What we will be left with is an alkaline waste land a sterile

01:16:44.889 --> 01:16:49.269
chemical sump where there is now one of the most beautiful and life productive

01:16:49.289 --> 01:17:02.449
places on earth.>> Far more than natural beauty was threatened at Mono Lake.

01:17:02.469 --> 01:17:07.839
>> What was at stake was a big aquatic ecosystem that was very simple but very

01:17:07.859 --> 01:17:12.729
productive. I mean the numbers are astronomical. You got algae and then the

01:17:12.750 --> 01:17:15.679
brine shrimp eat the algae and then you've got millions of birds coming every

01:17:15.679 --> 01:17:23.349
summer to eat the brine flies and the brine shrimp. A far off dream was out

01:17:23.369 --> 01:17:28.049
there but I don't think we gazed up at it too much. It might be too

01:17:28.069 --> 01:17:33.339
discouraging. I mean to have a handful of biologists fighting the Department of

01:17:33.359 --> 01:17:38.239
water and power of the city of Los Angeles with a multimillion dollar budget was

01:17:38.260 --> 01:17:43.749
too big of a contrast.>> When William Mulholland took water from Owens Valley

01:17:43.769 --> 01:17:49.539
and Mono Lake years before, no one questioned the damage to nature. But an

01:17:49.559 --> 01:17:54.909
environmental movement had come of age in America. Along with powerful new laws

01:17:54.929 --> 01:18:00.789
and a great shift in public opinion. Committees at Mono Lake and Owens Valley

01:18:00.809 --> 01:18:05.909
together with the Audubon Society, went to court to stop the water conquest

01:18:05.929 --> 01:18:10.529
Mulholland had set in motion in 1905.>> If you're angry and have nothing else--

01:18:10.550 --> 01:18:16.319
no other recourse I think dynamite comes to mind. And they were ranchers. They

01:18:16.340 --> 01:18:22.379
understood dynamite. We were college biologists. No experience with dynamite. We

01:18:22.399 --> 01:18:26.659
knew facts and figures and we knew that we could you know we were educated

01:18:26.679 --> 01:18:32.169
people and we could probably figure out how to find lobbyists to go to help us

01:18:32.189 --> 01:18:36.469
in Sacramento and how to find lawyers.People were saying well, ask for a lot. Go

01:18:36.489 --> 01:18:40.669
way high and then you compromise down with the politicians and the agencies and

01:18:40.689 --> 01:18:45.769
we were all biologists and we kind of said that doesn't sound right. Why can't

01:18:45.789 --> 01:18:50.589
we just start with what we know is the truth and it just stay there forever? And

01:18:50.609 --> 01:18:56.149
that's what we did.>> The courts ruled that drying out the Owens River or

01:18:56.170 --> 01:19:02.739
streams feeding Mono Lake was not in the public interest. In 1988, the state

01:19:02.760 --> 01:19:06.130
forced the city to return water to Mono for the first time in half a century.

01:19:06.130 --> 01:19:11.999
Los Angeles began water conservation on a scale never before seen in America.

01:19:12.019 --> 01:19:18.959
And now shares the water in a fragile peace with Owens Valley and Mono Lake.

01:19:18.979 --> 01:19:25.229
>> One local person said, if you guys say the lake I'll eat my hat. It turns out

01:19:25.250 --> 01:19:30.049
that we saved the lake and we have the regulations and people seem much happier.

01:19:30.069 --> 01:19:35.479
We see water running down the creek fish in the creek. Maybe some of them

01:19:35.500 --> 01:19:38.319
remember the great numbers of ducks and geese that were down at the lake and

01:19:38.319 --> 01:19:45.789
they look forward to that being in the future again.

01:19:45.809 --> 01:19:49.599
>> I didn't think that they would succeed in persuading the inaudible to let the

01:19:49.619 --> 01:19:57.759
water in again.>> What you think they would not succeed?

01:19:57.779 --> 01:20:04.719
>> Well, how can you fight the city of Los Angeles? So really this is a victory.

01:20:04.739 --> 01:20:13.879
A great victory.>> David Gaines did not live to see the victory. He had died a

01:20:13.899 --> 01:20:28.459
year before in an automobile accident not far from Mono Lake.

01:20:28.479 --> 01:20:34.939
>> And so finally, the machine that Mulholland had set in motion just kind of

01:20:34.960 --> 01:20:42.179
began to fall apart. The whole posture of the Los Angeles Department of water

01:20:42.199 --> 01:20:48.029
and power and the city changed. The city negotiated with Mono Lake folks and

01:20:48.050 --> 01:20:53.549
decided to give more water back to the lake. It gave up on the idea of importing

01:20:53.569 --> 01:21:00.389
Klamath River water or Columbia River water.>> I think ultimately, it was

01:21:00.409 --> 01:21:07.249
people's feeling why bring more water in if it just encourages more growth that

01:21:07.269 --> 01:21:12.189
forces us to bring more water in. You know?It's sort of a death vortex. It's the

01:21:12.210 --> 01:21:17.429
red Queen in Alice in Wonderland running faster and faster just to stay in

01:21:17.449 --> 01:21:25.579
place. And that mentality has sort of died a respectful death. And you know if

01:21:25.599 --> 01:21:30.979
there's an occasional shortage well that's too bad. We are in a desert here. We

01:21:31.000 --> 01:21:38.049
are not supposed to be like Miami all the time every day of the year to

01:21:38.069 --> 01:21:50.449
infinity.>> After the dam failure, my grandfather underwent the most profound

01:21:50.469 --> 01:21:59.449
change that you can imagine and-- but he had been a vigorous functioning

01:21:59.469 --> 01:22:05.559
70-year-old man or 72-year-old man at the time the dam failed. And he simply

01:22:05.579 --> 01:22:11.629
shriveled. He'd come out to the ranch and he sits in the living room with his

01:22:11.649 --> 01:22:18.399
cigar and the conversation would go around and he would just shut his eyes. He

01:22:18.420 --> 01:22:30.849
would sit there like some kind of a sleeping giant. I was so struck as a child

01:22:30.869 --> 01:22:37.829
when I attended the funeral and his body lay in state and city hall and the

01:22:37.849 --> 01:22:44.179
working men who came to pay their last respects to him. Some of them cried and

01:22:44.199 --> 01:22:47.880
when I was 12 years old and that made a big impression on me because I'd never

01:22:47.880 --> 01:22:55.199
seen grown men cry.And so, I derived from that that this was a man who had

01:22:55.219 --> 01:23:01.019
commanded a lot of love and respect in his day. And I've spent a lifetime trying

01:23:01.039 --> 01:23:06.329
to drive that with all the attacks that had been made on him by people who

01:23:06.349 --> 01:23:15.799
didn't know him.>> Freeways are settling down, believe it or not. We check on

01:23:15.819 --> 01:23:19.969
the 405 and the 101 leaving the Hollywood Hills. Not bad at all. No need to take

01:23:19.969 --> 01:23:24.439
alternate routes such as Laurel Canyon, Coldwater Canyon, or even Mulholland

01:23:24.460 --> 01:23:35.756
Drive. I'm Dr. Roadmap flying for Capt. Jorge inaudible 'copter 790.

01:23:35.776 --> 01:23:36.698
Music