Los Angeles’s mayor had no comment in an LA Times story Sunday that said the Department of Water and Power does not want to clean up the rest of the Owens Dry Lake dust and wants the State Lands Commission to do it.
LADWP and the Great Basin Air Pollution Control District signed an agreement which requires ongoing assessment and additional clean-up of dust to meet federal standards. APCD required DWP to clean up 2.9 square miles more. DWP has appealed that order to the State Air Resources Control Board.
Times reporter Louis Sahagun quotes former DWP General Manager David Freeman, who said, “We are seeing a fundamental reversal of a decade of relative harmony.” Freeman also said that “If the mayor does not want to leave office labeled as a polluter, he ought to think twice about that.” Reporter Sahagun wrote that Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa declined to comment.
The Times story says DWP claims they are not responsible for as much of the lake bed as APCD believes. LADWP Manager Ron Nichols said, “…the reality is that we don’t create all the dust out there, never did.” DWP now says that the State Lands Commission, which owns the lake bed, should be responsible for any additional clean-up. The story also quotes DWP officials as saying that if their appeal of the dust abatement wins, they will use about half the water on the lake, saving the average LA rate payer about $20 a year.
Air Pollution Director Ted Schade points out that the federal Clean Air Act does not say that close to completion of clean-up is good enough. Schade is quoted as saying that DWP is responsible for “controlling the lake bed that is exposed today because of their ongoing water diversions.”
Read the Times story at http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-owens-dust-20120610,0,6961679.story
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LADWP Manager Ron Nichols came from Washington state. He can’t in any way know how important water is to the desert.
LA was a desert, Owens valley was not. LADWP made Owens valley a desert and LA look like Washington State.
I would like to see Ron Nichols and Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa ordered by a judge to live in Keeler until Owens lake is fixed. Like what is done to bad slum lords that have to live in their slums until they fix them.
Then they will see where the dust comes from.
Easy way to fix the problem, turn it into a giant parking lot. I mean, at this point, would it be worse?
Millions of the tiny quagga mussels can block water grates and nearly fill water pipes.
“They grow so fast that the pipes start shrinking as they go and then they cut off our ability to deliver water,”
If they aren’t removed, they can slow or block the water from flowing through the pipes
The quagga mussel could very well be Inyo counties partner in stoping the flow of water South.
I like that Rob, but the only thing is … it would end up biting us in the xss in the long run some how .. always does.
Big Al, yes it’s not a good idea, but I hope in made you smile for a second.
LOL Rob it did.
A way to fix the problem is very elusive, in the long run, I think. my opinion would be to simply rehydrate the lake, they re hydrated the lower Owens river, only to pull it out and back into the aqueduct. Even that little bit of hydration is costing them their precious water.
It seems so simple to let the water flow in the lower Owens and into the lake, but simply done is not going to happen as long as their greed for the water, and the money they make off of it is the object of their desires and necessities.
They mentioned that they are only partially responsible for the lake dust, and that is really a truth. The lake was a lake that was in it’s own natural end, in that it was drying up as all inland desert lakes do.
But! They (LADWP) drastically accelerated that demise, causing pretty much of all of the dust problem. They try to imply little half truths like that and hope that people will buy into it.
Evaporation, loss of precious water is the reason they will not put any water into Owens Lake. If you Google Owens Lake, Wikipedia has an interesting read.
There is a part in there, that talks about the lake’s natural dehydration, that was accelerated by man’s with human involvement, even before Los Angeles showed up on the scene, farmers and ranchers in the Owens Valley had started water levels to drop even then, by diverting tributaries.
Al,
The Lake is largely being rehydrated, take a trip out there. Also since the dust controls were put in before the LORP was implemented, infrastructure does not allow for the River to “just flow into the Lake”
JeanGenie .. I don’t have to take a trip down there to see what you claim .. I have seen it .. and DWP is bringing rock from a quarry adjacent to the lake, to the east. They are crushing (Processing the rock) and hauling it by truck, out to the lake and spreading it over the lake surface.
There are several trucks working each day out there, making rounds from the quarry to the lake bed and dropping the loads on the lake surface, to be spread out. This is dust control.
While there is some amount of hydration on the lake bed, it is not largely hydrated. It looks gross, all of the levied roads, and patch work of water, sections of grasses, sections of crushed rock.
Infrastructure not allowing the river to just flow into the lake, is right, because the department doesn’t want to loose any precious money on the lake bed. In the same way it is taken back into the aquaduct, it could be taken back from the lake at the south end of the lake.
And speaking of gross … the gross amount of money being spent by the department to mitigate the dust problem by such means as the quarried rock being spread out, and the grasses being planted, which .. by the way, the grass has not done a thing, the minute amount of water has not mitigated very much of the dust problem.
The dust still blows either way the wind blows, and all the dust storms I have seen since all of this folly has begun … has not not decreased in particulates, no matter how much someone would crunch the numbers to try to BS everyone about how well they’re doing.
Make everybody that is pro LADWP, pitch in to the cost of eliminating the dust and invasisive species, and all the other problems that we face due to the city of LA diverting the water.
To them DWP does no wrong.
Their whole staff trying there best to vote in one of thier own to be District Supervisor, At the Q and A I didnt hear him say he was gonna do anything diferent, only it is what it is attitude!!
COME ON PEOPLE STOP BEING SELL OUTS!
Our valley needs our help! The fire danger is gonna continue to become higher in the valley, I dont know about you but I love every part of this valley.
give me the chance to put my money where my typing fingers are!!
Edit what you write. Your responses would be more credible.