LADWP press release
LOS ANGELES, CA – The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) last week released the following statement in response to the litigation filed by the Mono County Board of Supervisors.
“LADWP has continued operating this year as we have in prior years, providing irrigation water to ranchers in Mono County based on operational needs, as provided for in each lease. LADWP is considering entering into new leases with the ranchers and other lessees in Mono County and will complete a full and thorough Environmental Impact Report before the new leases are approved. While continuing to provide irrigation water to ranchers, LADWP – through regular field visits and an established working group – continues to work closely with and implement recommendations from the California Department of Fish & Wildlife, Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Fish and Wildlife, Mono County, local Audubon representatives, and U.S. Geological Survey to provide water for the region’s Sage Grouse.
“The amount of water the county is demanding we use for flood-irrigation on a small portion of City of LA owned-land in southern Mono County is enough to serve nearly 50,000 households every year and would cost Los Angeles ratepayers nearly $18 million to replace the amount of water requested and the lost hydropower it generates by purchasing additional supplies from the already stressed State Water Project. Climate change demands that we carefully manage limited water supplies throughout the State of California. We are committed to doing so and working with our lessees to use water more efficiently.”
Richard Harasick
LADWP Senior Assistant General Manager of Water System
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Right.
And the Earth has an over-population problem, and with that, one would think humans would put a cap on re-producing. Period.
Best solution yet! Crazy how that’s NEVER spoken.
It is true LA has a water problem, and with that, one would think Los Angeles County would put a cap on building. Period.
With some but not much do respect, to the
Golden Arch hamburger hater.The epitome of water mismanagement is the failure for the LADWP to provide it’s ratepayers a sustainable water supply from the early 1900’s engineering marvel of the LA Aqueduct. In the last 100+ years the LADWP has neither completed a project or demonstrated anything that was sustainable, anything that was a proactive management, anything that would have avoided a long list of litigated decisions ,sanctions and expense imposed on the rate payers of the DWP. If you need a portrait of mismanagement start with the most recent events . These include the Owens Lake Dust Mitigation. The Lower Owens River Project . The Mono Lake Issues, the lake level still hovering at the 6778 level . The 1997 MOU decisions ,The 1991 EIR and the LTWA and ……………………
Is DWP looking to change 100 + years of deceit, deception and delay and the rate payers forever out of pocket? Come on , you can not call out Ranchers who are stewards of the lands that they ranch, finding sustainable and environmental solutions that benefit the lands and the life cycle that has been established this past century over a beef you have with beef. Pure hypocrisy to call yourself Big Mac. Maybe it’s tongue in cheek , maybe trolling for your employer , maybe it’s pure ignorance, but you and the DWP have a common thread in your style. Hypocrisy is not sustainable in fact or fiction .
The idea of DWP and their Public Relations Magic Mystery tour for the most, does not hold water in the Eastern Sierra, in the Courts ,and now in Mono County. The Eastern Sierra will prevail in seeking truth and justice for our neighbors and truth and justice for the environment.
I’m not positive but the golf course’s in mammoth are watered with reclaimed water.
Perhaps, Annie.
But the epitome of water mismanagement is allowing its limited supply to be used by a handful of cattle ranchers to grow feed for their cows, i.e., to make hamburgers.
LADWP has rightfully concluded such use is contrary to its legal obligation to provide water to the people of the City of Los Angeles.
If it is so bothered by that decision, Mono County should put its money where its mouth is and acquire the rights to the ranchers’ irrigation water via eminent domain.
The Long Valley meadows have been created by ranchers over the last 150 years. Prior to that water had been spread naturally via yearly snow runoff. Long Valley meadows arose from nature first then human actions mimicking nature. They support wildlife of all kinds and a heritage working landscape ridden by ranching families. This spreading of water has been mislabeled by Los Angeles as ‘artificial’, but the only ‘artificial’ activities are by Los Angels sending water hundreds of miles to the south, building a dam impounding a river, drying up the Gorge for hydro power and much more when looking at Inyo County to the south.
Wetlands existed where Crowley Lake is today, but were lost since 1941 when the reservoir was filled. They had sequestered carbon and stored water. Those functional benefits of carbon capture and water storage are being protected, enhanced or created all over the world today as primary methods of climate change adaptation. We must remove carbon from our atmosphere and we must protect and expand storing water for a slow release and use later. Los Angeles’ proposes to destroy them.
Ranchers pay for their leases so there is no ‘free’ water as Los Angeles falsely states. Rate payers don’t suffer from loss of water in Inyo and Mono. They suffer due to LADWP transferring, with voter approval, over $200,000,000 per year to the Mayor and City Council instead of keeping rates down and fixing their decaying infrastructure. Working collaboratively Los Angeles and its partners at Owens Lake will free up 30,000 acre-feet of water which more than equals the water in question in Long Valley. Stop this blunt force power play of rolling over rural communities. Los Angeles serf-describes itself as being ‘green’ but its treatment of those of us who live here in Inyo/Mono show that social and environmental justice in LA stop at the city limits.
Your first two sentences contradict one another Mr. Prather, and reveal the fallacy of your argument.
You first say that the ranchers “created” the Long Valley meadows during the last 150 years.
Then you say that, before the ranchers came along, the meadows had been created “naturally,” by snow run-off.
If the second statement is true, there would have been no need for the ranchers to “create” the meadows – they would have already been there.
Happily, the truth of the matter is easy to see: the riparian vegetative patterns of the area show that snow-melt runoff on the Eastside drains via distinct channels – small streams, creeks, and the Owens River; it doesn’t naturally spread over large areas of relatively flat land.
Thus, the meadows were created by humans for their own benefit – to raise cattle.
While it is easy to make LADWP the villain and romanticize about cowboys, the fact is that Los Angeles is simply returning the land to its natural, pre-rancher state.
Again, if it’s such a big deal, all the “friends of the cowboy” should get together and buy them some water from LADWP.
North, south, east and west the DWP never ceases to preform inadequately to the needs of sustainable management
https://www.dailynews.com/2018/09/05/after-damage-to-granada-hills-wetlands-epa-orders-ladwp-to-pay-5-3-million-in-credits-into-mitigation-bank/
All on the backs of rate payers and the environment
And Mammoth uses its limited water supply on golf courses, snow-making, and condo toilets.
I guess all of those swimming pools are how they carefully manage limited water supplies