The 100th anniversary of the opening of the Los Angeles Aqueduct highlights the water connection that binds the remote Eastern Sierra to Los Angeles. Anniversaries are about both looking back and also looking forward, and we’ve always felt that Mono Lake is a model of how a sustainable balance can be struck for the future between protection of the lake and its tributary streams, and the urban water needs of Los Angeles.
On Tuesday, one hundred years to the day since the opening of the aqueduct, the Los Angeles Times editorial “Quenching L.A.’s thirst“ explored that theme quite nicely, looking at the City’s past and its future in the context of water supply statewide. Take a moment to give it a good read. Here’s our favorite part:
So the century-old Los Angeles Aqueduct has two stories. One is about ambition, optimism and the construction of a great city; the other is about arrogance and environmental destruction wreaked in the Eastern Sierra and replicated across much of the state.
But there is a third story as well, and it is still being written. Depending on one’s point of view, it may be seen as a story of redemption or comeuppance, but in any case it may well be a story of a sustainable future.
It began with the lawsuit brought against Los Angeles and its Department of Water and Power in 1979 to protect Mono Lake.
Los Angeles Times: Quenching L.A.’s Thirst