California Water Wars - A River in the Desert | 1

American History Tellers

Wondery

Society & Culture, Kids & Family, History, Education For Kids

4.7 • 18.3K Ratings

🗓️ 22 January 2020

⏱️ 38 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

By the turn of the twentieth century, Los Angeles had grown from a dusty, crime-ridden pueblo into a thriving metropolis. The only problem was that it was growing too fast. With no consistently reliable water source and a desert climate leading to a decade-long drought, the city would have to begin looking elsewhere.

In the Owens River Valley, over two hundred miles north of the city, a vast, rushing river, fed by Sierra mountain snow, lay the solution. But how to get the water from the Owens Valley to Los Angeles? City water superintendent William Mulholland and former Los Angeles mayor Fred Eaton devised a breathtakingly simple plan: they would build an aqueduct. As Mulholland began sketching out an engineering vision for the project, Eaton secretly purchased land rights in the Owens Valley.

But Eaton’s methods left many valley residents bewildered and angry, setting up a decades-long battle for survival that would pit a metropolis against a small ranching community.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, prime members, you can listen to American History Tellers add free on Amazon Music, download the app today.
0:18.0	Imagine its March 1905.
0:20.0	You're a young engineer with a Los Angeles Department of Water and Power,
0:24.0	but you barely spend a moment indoors at your desk since you started the job.
0:29.0	It's late at night, and you're knee deep in what's left of the 4th Street sewer line.
0:33.0	A two-day storm flooded the reserves, and you've been scrambling with other city workers to try and repair the damage.
0:39.0	Alright, take a break. We've got a tent set up outside, drink some coffee.
0:43.0	After hours working in the foul smelling muck, you're finally relieved.
0:47.0	You make your way towards a makeshift tent and try unsuccessfully to warm your hands.
0:52.0	Seated next to you is a fellow engineer named Harvey.
0:55.0	He's older and higher up in the water department.
0:58.0	Now here with him in the tent, we try to think of something to break the silence.
1:02.0	So, some drought, huh?
1:04.0	Harvey squins and looks at you, possibly seeing you for the first time.
1:08.0	I'd like to meet the fellow who thought it was a good idea to build a city here.
1:12.0	He sounds tired, like a man who has spent all his time dealing with the same problem over and over.
1:17.0	No fresh water anywhere except a tiny river that spends most of the time bone dry,
1:22.0	and then immediately floods anytime a drop of rain falls, totally asinine.
1:27.0	Either there's no water at all, or just too much.
1:30.0	For 10 years, Los Angeles has been under drought conditions.
1:34.0	The Department Institute water rationing, but it hasn't helped.
1:37.0	Though it doesn't look like it recently, there simply isn't enough rain,
	...

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