INDEPENDENCE, CALIF. — Against a backdrop of lofty snowcapped peaks, about 500 spectators, led by Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, gathered Wednesday to watch the Lower Owens River ripple anew with its first surge of High Sierra water in nearly a century.
The largest river habitat restoration effort ever attempted in the West was jump-started at 12:15 p.m., when Villaraigosa turned a control knob to open a new clamshell-shaped steel gate at a diversion dam that has been directing the waters that have flowed into the Los Angeles Aqueduct since 1913.
The event marked a brief detente in historic water wars that have boiled in the Owens Valley since the early 1900s, when Los Angeles city agents posed as ranchers and farmers to buy land and water rights in the valley. Their goal was to build an aqueduct that would help transform Los Angeles into a metropolis.
The stealth and deception became grist for books and movies that portrayed the dark underbelly of Los Angeles' formative years.
Cheers and applause -- along with the grinding gears of the steel gate -- welcomed the icy, emerald green water that roared into the river channel.
Villaraigosa, smiling broadly, gave a thumbs up.
In an interview moments earlier, the mayor said, "This is a new chapter in our relationship with the Owens Valley. We can't take back what happened here 90 years ago, but we can make it better."
On Nov. 5, 1913, 40,000 people assembled at the southern end of the gravity-powered aqueduct and let out a cheer when the first Owens River water splashed into the San Fernando Valley.
Among them was L.A. water czar William Mulholland, who told the crowd: "There it is! Take it!"
But the engineering marvel that transformed Los Angeles came at a high price for residents of this rugged wide-open territory bisected by U.S. Highway 395.
After the water was diverted into the aqueduct, there was no more for the 62-mile-long Lower Owens River. It also denied water to the river's massive catch basin, Owens Lake, which evaporated into vast salt flats prone to causing choking dust storms.
The Second Los Angeles Aqueduct opened in 1970. Beginning just south of the Owens lakebed and ending 200 miles south in the San Fernando Valley, it added 50% more capacity to the water system.
The two Los Angeles aqueducts deliver about 430 million gallons a day to the city.
