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| 2/15/2008 | For Valentine's Day, Lower Owens carries LA mayor away |
| OWENS RIVER INTAKE, INYO COUNTY, CA--Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa let the Lower Owens River sweep him off his feet Wednesday, February 13. After presiding over a ceremony to celebrate the beginning of the first artificial seasonal habitat flow since the river's official rewatering in December 2006, the mayor climbed into a yellow canoe and rowed gently downstream. Many others joined him in a small celebratory flotilla, including Mark Bagley, local Sierra Club representative, and David Nahai, new DWP general manager, who sat elbow-to-elbow at the bow of a drift boat. The Lower Owens River Project partly mitigates environmental damage from groundwater pumping from 1970 to 1990. Yearly seasonal habitat flows--including this, the first for the newly rewatered river--are meant to imitate natural flooding by redistributing muck from the river bottom, helping to distribute and germinate seeds from riparian vegetation such as willows and cottonwood, and recharging groundwater tables in the flood plain, among other purposes. Several speakers at the ceremony wryly acknowledged that mitigation projects for Los Angeles' water exports from the Owens Valley have often been a labor of law more than a labor of love. "We recognize that Los Angeles was a desert before we came to the Owens Valley and that the Owens Valley was an oasis," the mayor said. "....Today we say we're going to share the prosperity....We're here to be the neighbors we should have been one hundred years ago." "We've done this together," said David Nahai, who served on the Los Angeles Board of Water and Power Commissioners before becoming LADWP's new general manager in December 2007. "....While the past is immutable, the future is there for anyone to change." That future is still written in water. Although the Lower Owens River Project partly mitigates groundwater pumping damage from 1970-1990, damage to the Owens Valley from ongoing groundwater pumping is still a source of conflict. In spite of joint groundwater management agreements, Los Angeles' average yearly groundwater pumping exceeded sustainable levels until 2005, when a court order temporarily reduced Los Angeles' groundwater pumping in the Owens Valley until minimum flows in the river were well established. Inyo County and Los Angeles are still negotiating the terms by which groundwater pumping in the Owens Valley will be managed to avoid additional environmental impacts. Desertification and damage to the valley's groundwater-dependent meadows are a deep and ongoing concern. And, as Owens Valley Committee president Carla Scheidlinger noted during the habitat flow ceremony, the Lower Owens River Project's degree of success will rest on an as-yet-to-be-determined monitoring and adaptive management plan for the river. Habitat flows to the Lower Owens will be ramped up slowly during a seven-day period from the river's base flow of 40 cubic feet per second to approximately 200 cubic feet per second at the Aqueduct Intake by about February 20. A peak flow of 200 cubic feet per second will be maintained for 24 hours, and then flows will slowly drop again by about 20 percent per day to the 40 cubic feet per second base flow. Increased flows will take approximately two weeks to travel down the river to the Alabama Gates area, where flows will then be supplemented to maintain a 200 cfs flow for several days in the Lower Owens River below the Alabama Spill Gate. |
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| Contacts: | Ceal Klingler webmaster@ovcweb.org Phone: |
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| 12/12/2007 | Deaton retires, and Nahai takes the helm |
| The Los Angeles City Council has confirmed H. David Nahai's appointment as new general manager for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. Mayor Villaraigosa announced his appointment of Nahai, who served as a Board of Water and Power commissioner for two years, this October, after Los Angeles Department of Water and Power general manager Ron Deaton announced that he would be retiring from his position in December. Nahai's appointment required approval by the City Council. Deaton, who worked with the City of Los Angeles for 42 years, made a reluctant decision to retire after several months of medical leave with heart problems. "The challenges over the last several months are surpassed only by the difficult decision to retire from service in the City I hold so dear," Deaton wrote in a letter to Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. "....Most recently, it was a distinct pleasure to focus my energies at the place where my City Service began--The Department of Water and Power." Nahai has visited the Owens Valley several times to consider local water policy issues during his service as a DWP commissioner, and has garnered a reputation locally for detailed knowledge of the issues and for a patient--but wary--ear for residents' comments and questions. He has gained a reputation for pithy and humorous observations as well, such as his rewording of William Mulholland's 1913 speech regarding the diversion of the Owens River. "There it is," Nahai said at the Owens River rewatering ceremony in 2006. "Take it back." --Ceal Klingler |
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| 7/13/2007 | In brief: Standing Committee meeting summary |
| BISHOP--The Inyo County/Los Angeles Standing Committee, a group of appointed representatives from Inyo County and Los Angeles created to jointly manage groundwater policy in the Owens Valley, met Monday to discuss Green Book revisions, the Lower Owens River Project, upcoming responsibilities, and mitigation projects. The meeting flowed quickly with only one snag and a mostly warm current that Los Angeles Water Commissioner David Nahai attributed, with a wry smile, to members' efforts "to introduce a modicum of trust." In brief: * Green Book: No formal revisions have been drafted yet for the Green Book--a technical appendix to the 1991 Long Term Water Agreement that sets forth protocols for monitoring of water tables and management of groundwater pumping (see endnote 1)--but suggested revisions will likely involve hydrologic aspects of ON/OFF triggers for wells, evaluation of exempt wells, groundwater mining (and hopefully the prevention thereof), and testing of new wells. * Lower Owens River Project: In measurements taken last week, water flows in the river averaged well above 40 cubic feet per second at all of the monitoring stations except the pumpback station. As hoped, riparian vegetation is quickly greening the banks of the river channel. * Standing Committee responsibilities: In years when runoff is less than average, the Standing Committee will need to approve water releases to the Blackrock Waterfowl Area and will also need to approve the amount of water (if any) dedicated to the yearly Lower Owens River seasonal habitat flow. * Presentation of projects from the ad hoc group: The 1997 Memorandum of Understanding stipulates, among other requirements, that LADWP must complete a number of environmental mitigation projects for which the total water allotment would be approximately 1600 acre feet per year. Although a project at Hines Spring is required, the nature and location of other mitigation projects are somewhat flexible. Tom Brooks of Inyo County Water Department and Carla Scheidlinger of the Owens Valley Committee presented a list of potential mitigation projects negotiated by an ad hoc group of representatives from ICWD, LADWP, Sierra Club, the Owens Valley Committee, California DFG, the Inyo County Agricultural Commssioner, and the ranching community. The group selected potential projects that would, among other criteria, require very little or no MOU or Stipulation and Order modification, require no new wells that might be misinterpreted as potential new production wells, and that would not return additional flow to the river (and hence to the LA aqueduct). Six potential projects throughout the valley met these and other criteria and include projects to: -return water to the historic channels of Freeman Creek -develop riparian and aquatic habitat in the Hines Creek/Aberdeen Ditch area -create ponds or wetland/riparian vegetation in the Hines Spring area -create spring-type habitat southeast of Independence -create spring-type habitat north of Mazourka Canyon Road -deliver the balance of mitigation water to Warren Lake. *Public comments: The Standing Committee invited a member of the public to make scheduled but not publicly agendized comments following the LORP update regarding the effects of the first river flushing/seasonal habitat flow on his ranch's grazing schedule. During these comments, the Standing Committee began to discuss potential ways of changing the timing or volume of the flow. Confusion ensued among both the Committee members and the audience regarding timing of public comments and formal meeting and decision rules. The Standing Committee then decided to allow public comments following each of the remaining agenda items. Comments from the public included comments 1) urging the Committee to schedule a public discussion and to consider the rationale for the first flushing flow/seasonal habitat flow before considering changing the management of the LORP; 2) praise for the ad hoc process; and 3) a request to consider certain policy changes in groundwater management. Daniel Pritchett of the Bristlecone chapter of the California Native Plant Society suggested that the Standing Committee set benchmarks, deadlines, and goals for the Technical Group, that Technical Group meetings should be tape recorded to solve the question of how to get accurate information to the public regarding the content of those meetings, and that rather than pumping additional groundwater to mitigate for groundwater pumping damage at Big Seeley Springs and other areas in the valley, the Standing Committee should first consider whether those mitigation projects violate an overriding requirement of the Long Term Water Agreement to avoid further significant impacts. Mr. Pritchett also submitted additional written comments, which we have posted on the Owens Valley Committee website as a PDF (see endnote 2). In response, Los Angeles Commissioner David Nahai agreed that a Technical Group timeline should be established and that Los Angeles would ask the city attorney to evaluate whether prevention (i.e., avoidance of damage) was a higher legal priority than remediation. (1) To see a PDF of the 1990 Green Book, which is not in fact green but which has appeared in the real world with a green paper cover, see www.inyowater.org/Water_Resources/Green%20Book%202000.PDF (2) Links to download Mr. Pritchett's comments and a related cover letter from the Bristlecone chapter of the CNPS are posted under "Ripples" on the OVC home page at www.OVCweb.org |
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| 5/23/2007 | A first descent: Lower Owens floats their boats |
| In a celebration of the river's renewed existence, nine people kayaked and canoed approximately the northmost five miles of the Lower Owens this April in what was likely the first boat descent in nearly a century. Until a rewatering ceremony December 6, 2006, the southern sixty miles of the Owens River had been mostly a memory and an empty riverbed since 1913, when Los Angeles diverted the river into the first Los Angeles aqueduct. Plans for a river resurrection surfaced in the 1980s and 1990s, when Los Angeles lost a series of court battles over impacts to the Owens Valley from excessive groundwater pumping and from exports via a second aqueduct. Eventually the city agreed to partly restore the Lower Owens River as partial mitigation for thirty years of groundwater pumping damage, but the project stalled in its planning stages. In 2005, a judge ordered Los Angeles to, among other measures, begin flows to the river by January 2007 or risk losing the use of its second Owens Valley aqueduct. Flows began in winter 2006, and Los Angeles announced in February 2007 that flows had reached required levels throughout the river. Speculation about floating the river inevitably followed--or rather, led. The river explorers met obstacles, of course: chain link fence, tules, tamarisk stumps. But they persevered. “In some cases we could squeeze by, next to a bank, either paddling with great difficulty or walking on the bottom and pulling the boats,” wrote Frank Colver, an Owens Valley Committee member, in a recent account of the descent. “....In many cases the water was so deep where we needed to push a path through the tules that we could not use our feet on the bottom for traction. Instead, we would sort of lie down or walk on our knees being supported by the floating refuse of dead tules.” Colver is fairly certain he and other expedition members--Gary, Karla, and Jessamyn Peebles; Nathan and Mike Piehl; Mel Herlin; Sylvia Stevenson; and Russ Brown--can claim the title of first descent of the newly restored river. “We did not see any evidence of anyone having broken a boat path through the tules,” he wrote. “It looked untouched (it doesn’t any longer).” The trip breaks no records for longest, most difficult, or most remote. No one will sing love songs to the river's rapids, or extoll any holes, plunge pools, or dangerous deviousness--oxbows notwithstanding. What makes this river trip special is not the character of the river's water; it's the simple presence of water. “It was a thrill for me to float over the new gauging station just above Black Rock Road," Colver wrote. "Last December 7 I walked over to it--[it was] only a trickle then--and stood there wondering if I would ever be able to find myself floating over it.” The group took out at the east bank of the river at Black Rock Road, leaving further exploration for a time when the channel is less choked with vegetation. For a while, the Lower Owens River Project wouldn't float. Now it does. --Ceal Klingler |
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| 3/13/2007 | Judge rules lower Owens close, but no vacation |
| MARCH 13, 2007--In a ruling issued late yesterday, Inyo County Superior Court Judge Lee Cooper found that the Los Angeles Department of Water (DWP) has "proceeded with commendable diligence" in complying with a 2005 court order to rewater the lower Owens River, but that DWP isn't done yet. "On the record before me, I cannot find that the City has complied with all of the conditions set forth," Cooper wrote. "....All means all, not just some of the conditions!" Los Angeles diverted the lower Owens River to its first aqueduct in 1913. The river rewatering project, required as partial mitigation for environmental damage from Los Angeles' groundwater pumping in the Owens Valley from 1970 to 1990, had foundered for years until a lawsuit initiated by the Owens Valley Committee and the Sierra Club resulted in Judge Cooper's 2005 order. In his 2005 ruling, Cooper issued an injunction that would stop Los Angeles' water exports via its second aqueduct if the City did not meet certain conditions by January and July of 2007. Among other measures, the court order required Los Angeles to pay $5,000 a day beginning September 5, 2005 and continuing until flows in the lower Owens had been fully implemented. The City was also required to begin flows to the lower Owens River by January 2007 and to implement flows of 40 cubic feet per second throughout the river by July 2007. Los Angeles began flows into the lower Owens River in early December last year. In late February, attorneys for the City submitted a request to Judge Cooper to vacate the injunction and lift the other conditions of the court order. "LADWP is pleased to inform the Court and the parties that it has established permanent baseflows of approximately 40 c.f.s. throughout the Lower Owens River in compliance with the Court's Order.... nearly five months ahead of the compliance deadline," the City's attorneys wrote. Judge Cooper, however, found that the City hadn't earned a vacation yet. The DWP had constructed only nine of 17 stations required for monitoring flows throughout the river and was unable to provide adequate data about the volume of the flows. "Regrettably," the judge wrote, "given the history of the [Lower Owens River Project], a certain level of skepticism by the other parties about DWP's representations is understandable, particularly when required monitoring stations have not been provided and the additional flow data that would have been generated is not available." Nevertheless, the judge continued, he looked forward to Los Angeles' fulfillment of all of the conditions of his order, which would allow him to "declare the Lower Owens to be a river again." --Ceal Klingler |
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