Owens Lake

Re "Accord Ends Bitter Owens Valley Dispute--but Will Dust Settle?" Aug. 18: When Los Angeles caused Owens Lake to dry in the 1920s, not only was a dust health hazard created but a valuable wildlife resource was nearly destroyed. Even today Owens Lake is more than merely a "barren lake bed." A string of small wetlands lines its margins where thousands of shorebirds feast on brine flies during their migration between the arctic and Central and South America. Please remember that Owens Lake is not dead and that dust is not the only issue.

The Times' editorial board meets around a long table in a room hung with images of the interlocking histories of this newspaper and its city — of Otis Chandler and the election of Ronald Reagan, our endorsement of Barack Obama and the burial of President Nixon. At the head of that table is a reprint of the front page from Nov. 6, 1913. It memorializes the opening of the Los Angeles Aqueduct, the defining event of this city's early existence, a fact recognized by the day's headline: "Silver Torrent Crowns the City's Mighty Achievement.

Nearly a century after Los Angeles drained Owens Lake by diverting its water to the Los Angeles Aqueduct, the city now hopes to generate solar energy on the dusty salt flats it left behind. The Department of Water and Power's board of commissioners Tuesday unanimously approved a renewable energy pilot project that would cover 616 acres of lake bed with solar arrays -- a possible precursor to a mammoth solar farm that could cover thousands of acres. City utility officials hope that, along with generating power for L.A., the solar panels would reduce the fierce dust storms that rise from the dry lake bed. To comply with federal clean air standards, the DWP must control the dust that has plagued the Owens Valley for decades.

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power's ambitious plan to put solar panels on 80 square miles of dry lake bed and flatlands east of the Sierra Nevada range has run into a daunting problem: extremely caustic mud in an area where it hoped to build an 80-acre pilot project. Preliminary engineering tests show that if solar panel platforms were placed at the southern end of the nearly dry 110-square-mile Owens Lake, they would sink as much as several inches into extremely corrosive soil.

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power's ambitious plan to put solar panels on 80 square miles of dry lake bed and flatlands east of the Sierra Nevada range has run into a daunting problem: extremely caustic mud in an area where it hoped to build an 80-acre pilot project. Preliminary engineering tests show that if solar panel platforms were placed at the southern end of the nearly dry 110-square-mile Owens Lake, they would sink as much as several inches into extremely corrosive soil.

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power once chose to delay and litigate rather than stop its massive water diversions from Mono Lake, despite evidence that it was destroying this unique aquatic habitat in the eastern Sierra. During the 1970s and '80s, the agency maintained it couldn't live if it lost a single drop of its water. Only after a string of court defeats and expense of millions of dollars in legal fees did it cut its diversions.

A bright idea for a park Re "DWP pitches solar farm, state park at Owens Lake," Dec. 18 The possible creation of an Owens Lake state park or reserve for this region's enormously rich wildlife populations as part of a plan to save water, control dust and generate solar power deserves praise. This creative solution, at this time only a concept, would help Los Angeles and help protect the tens of thousands of migrating shorebirds and waterfowl that have returned to Owens Lake.

Amid all the clouds of rhetorical grit over cleaning up the Owens Dry Lake, these facts are clear: With the opening of its aqueduct in 1913, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power began to divert water from the Owens River southward. Eighty-five years of diversions turned Owens Lake, once fed by the Eastern Sierra, into a 110-square-mile dust bowl. That lake bed is now the largest single source of air pollution in the United States.

Los Angeles city officials are drafting a master plan for a proposed solar farm and possibly a state park on Owens Lake, drained nearly a century ago when its water was diverted to the Los Angeles Aqueduct, officials said Thursday. Representatives with the Department of Water and Power disclosed the concept when they appeared before the California State Lands Commission, which has regulatory authority over the dusty lake bed near Lone Pine. Commission members, meeting in San Diego, said they were intrigued by the idea but remain wary because of the DWP's history of using its ample political power to get its way and not cooperate with the state panel.

Re "Owens Valley Plan Seeks L.A. Water to Curb Pollution," Dec. 17: The people of Los Angeles should be aware that dust from Owens Lake is the single largest source of pollution in the U.S. Its billowing clouds containing arsenic and other health hazards have been tracked as far as Chicago from the most severe storms. The population and thirst of L.A. have increased manyfold since the water rights were first acquired, and continue to grow. I believe that the DWP needs to follow the lead of Santa Catalina--no more water hookups.

First it was silver ore that streamed to Los Angeles from the rim of the Owens Valley, then the water from the valley floor. Now, L.A. has come back for the sunshine. The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, the agency responsible for turning Owens Lake into a dusty salt flat and snatching up nearly every acre from Lone Pine to Bishop, has its sights on transforming the Owens Valley into one of largest sources of solar power in America. Interim DWP Chief S. David Freeman says the valley on the dry side of the Sierra Nevada is blessed with the "best sun in the country."

A bright idea for a park Re "DWP pitches solar farm, state park at Owens Lake," Dec. 18 The possible creation of an Owens Lake state park or reserve for this region's enormously rich wildlife populations as part of a plan to save water, control dust and generate solar power deserves praise. This creative solution, at this time only a concept, would help Los Angeles and help protect the tens of thousands of migrating shorebirds and waterfowl that have returned to Owens Lake.

Los Angeles city officials are drafting a master plan for a proposed solar farm and possibly a state park on Owens Lake, drained nearly a century ago when its water was diverted to the Los Angeles Aqueduct, officials said Thursday. Representatives with the Department of Water and Power disclosed the concept when they appeared before the California State Lands Commission, which has regulatory authority over the dusty lake bed near Lone Pine. Commission members, meeting in San Diego, said they were intrigued by the idea but remain wary because of the DWP's history of using its ample political power to get its way and not cooperate with the state panel.

Nearly a century after Los Angeles drained Owens Lake by diverting its water to the Los Angeles Aqueduct, the city now hopes to generate solar energy on the dusty salt flats it left behind. The Department of Water and Power's board of commissioners Tuesday unanimously approved a renewable energy pilot project that would cover 616 acres of lake bed with solar arrays -- a possible precursor to a mammoth solar farm that could cover thousands of acres. City utility officials hope that, along with generating power for L.A., the solar panels would reduce the fierce dust storms that rise from the dry lake bed. To comply with federal clean air standards, the DWP must control the dust that has plagued the Owens Valley for decades.

There's an uproar over the infamous freshwater quagga mussel at Klondike Lake, one of the few patches of water in the sprawling Owens Valley open to motorized recreation. In an effort to keep the prolific, destructive bivalve from surging into the Los Angeles aqueduct system, the city's Department of Water and Power banned the use of personal watercraft (such as Jet Skis) and recreational boats on the 160-acre lake -- and installed a fence around it.

Teams of biologists fanned out across the vast playa of Owens Lake on Saturday to take a full accounting of one of environmentalism's unintended successes: tens of thousands of migrating waterfowl and shorebirds roosting on a dust-control project. The 100-square-mile lake just east of Sequoia National Park was transformed into dusty salt flats after 1913, when its cargo of snowmelt and spring water was diverted into the Los Angeles Aqueduct.

Plans by the Southern Pacific railroad to dump 15,000 cubic yards of sodium bicarbonate into Owens Lake have run afoul of a group of Inyo County residents, who fear the sand-like material could be a health hazard. Railroad officials said they are running out of places to take the sodium bicarbonate, which remains heaped in a residential area of San Bernardino where it spilled from a runaway freight train on May 12. It was mined from Owens Lake and destined for the Port of Los Angeles when the train jumped the tracks, killing four people.

Declaring it a historic moment, the Los Angeles City Council approved a deal Friday aimed at decreasing air pollution in the Owens Valley. The council's unanimous action, with 10 members present, culminates a decades-long debate over Owens Lake that has focused mainly on how much the city should do to stop dust from the Inyo County lake bed from polluting the air.

One of the downsides to global warming is drought. About 11 million people in northeast Africa alone were in serious danger of starvation in 2006 as a result of drought. The International Institute of Tropical Agriculture in Nigeria estimates that about 300 million people in sub-Saharan Africa -- nearly a third of the population -- will suffer from malnutrition because of intensifying drought by 2010.

Nearly a century after Los Angeles' water demands reduced it to a parched wisp of a river, a 62-mile-stretch of the Lower Owens is about to make a comeback in one of the most ambitious river restoration efforts ever attempted. The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, fulfilling a long-delayed commitment, plans to put water back into the river on Dec. 6 in hopes of transforming its puddles and ponds into a biological superhighway of trees, fish, waterfowl, songbirds, elk and deer.