Owens Valley tribesfight to reclaimʻland of flowing water'

In a desert landscape dominated by sagebrush, a piece of Los Angeles’ immense water empire stands behind a chain-link fence: a hydrant-like piece of metal atop a well. The electric pump hums as it sends water gushing into a canal, forming a stream in the desert.

- Ian JAMES

THOMAS RIVER Watterson, a member of the Paiute, insulates garlic with hay.

This well is one of 105 that L.A. owns across the Owens Valley. They were drilled decades ago, many of them when the city opened a second giant pipeline, nearly doubling its famous aqueduct to send more water south.

While many Californians know the story of how L.A. seized the valley's river water in the early 1900s and drained Owens Lake, fewer know that the city also pulls up a significant amount of water from underground. The pumping has led to resentment among leaders of Native tribes, who say it is leaving their valley parched and harming the environment.

“We've seen so many impacts from groundwater pumping,” said Teri Red Owl, an Indigenous leader. “There's a lot of areas that are dewatered, that are dried up.”

The valley spreads out at springs, the base of the Sierra Nevada more than 200 miles north of Los Angeles. Once it had so many streams and wetlands that the Paiute and Shoshone people called their homeland Payahuunadü, "the land of flowing water." Today, tribal members say L.A.'s extensive use of water has transformed the landscape, desiccating many springs and meadows, killing native grasses and altering the ecosystem.

Red Owl, a member of the Bishop Paiute Tribe, is executive director of the Owens Valley Indian Water Commission, which focuses on helping tribes regain some of the lands and water they lost more than a century ago, first to white farmers and ranchers, then to Los Angeles.

"We're just a water colony," Red Owl said as she drove from one well to another, passing dry, brown expanses with signs marking the land as L.A. city property.

The L.A. Department of Water and Power owns much of the land in the Owens Valley, where the city gets about one-third of its water from mountain streams and the Owens River.