A Bit of Background …
Back in 1913, the City of Los Angeles began diverting the Owens River to Los Angeles. It was the first big water project completed in California; others would soon follow, which had mostly dried up Owens Lake by 1926. Once the lake bed was exposed, it was exploited still more by companies who mined the lake itself for its precious minerals. Owens Lake, once large enough to run steamer ships across it from the mines on the eastern shore of the lake, became a dry and dusty playa.
The frequent winds in the fall and spring months whip up chronic and toxic blowing dust, which was the worst source of air pollution in the entire United States and a serious threat to public health sending up as much as 10,000 feet up into the atmosphere. The dry Owens Lake bed was the largest source of dust emissions in the United States prior to application of dust control measures. The photo below is from a dust storm just a few years ago, so you can only imagine how bad the problem was prior to Owen’s Lake Dust Mitigation Project. (Photo credit (below): B Russel/Great Basin Unified Air Protection Control District).
Litigation commenced in the 1970s to force LADWP to mitigate the blowing dust, and over the years, beginning in 2001, various mitigation measures were put in place at the lake—some more successful than others (blowing dust has now been reduced by 95%, which is a good thing, and means the mitigation measures have paid off).
In addition to the mitigation efforts, something else significant happened—in 2006, LADWP, under court order, began sending water back down the lower Owens River below the aqueduct for the first time since its construction. The result of those two things meant that there was finally water—carefully controlled and gridded off—on the lake for the first time in almost a century.
During this period, Power Design has supplied over 800 fiberglass enclosures to Los Angeles Department of Water for the project. Our project engineers worked with the Department to develop fiberglass enclosures & pedestals to house various electrical equipment, irrigation pumps, transformers and that have withstood the test of time.
And Now …
Owens Lake is never completely dry. It is ringed with a series of springs and seeps along its western shore which kept an active marsh and grassland area alive on the lake. With the addition of the water on the lake itself, limited though it is, the birds have come back. And they came back in massive numbers, and did so with a rapidity that surprised just about everyone. But it was one key species that really got everyone’s attention—the tiny snowy plover. A state species of special concern because of rapid habitat loss, it was this small shorebird’s presence at the lake that got relevant parties to really take a closer look at what was happening with bird life on the lake.
