Everything about Los Angeles Aqueduct totally explained
There are two
Los Angeles Aqueducts, the
First Los Angeles Aqueduct (or the
Owens Valley aqueduct) (completed 1913) and the
Second Los Angeles Aqueduct (completed 1970).
First Los Angeles Aqueduct
The original Los Angeles
Aqueduct was designed by
William Mulholland (an Irish immigrant who became a self-taught engineer and head of the
Los Angeles Department of Water and Power) to deliver water from the
Owens River near
Independence, California, to the city of
Los Angeles, California.
The project began in 1905 with a budget of $24.5 million. With 5,000 workers employed in its construction, the Los Angeles Aqueduct was finished in 1913. It consisted of 223 miles of 12-foot steel pipe, 120 miles of railroad track, 2 hydroelectric plants, 170 miles of power lines, 240 miles of telephone line, a cement plant, and 500 miles of roads. The aqueduct used gravity to carry the water, so it was relatively autonomous and cost-efficient. Apart from the catastrophic failure of the
St. Francis Dam in 1928 that flooded the
Santa Clarita Valley and parts of
Ventura County (resulting in disgrace and financial ruin for Mulholland), and an incident of sabotage by displaced
Owens Valley farmers a few years previously, the aqueduct system has worked well throughout its history, and is still in use.
The construction of the Los Angeles Aqueduct effectively ended the development of the Owens Valley as a farming community and devastated the ecosystem of
Owens Lake. Mulholland and his associates, including
Los Angeles Times publisher,
Harrison Gray Otis have often been criticized for using deceptive tactics to obtain
Bureau of Reclamation rights to the
Owens River's flow. However, the aqueduct's water was crucial in the development of Los Angeles, and Mulholland's role in this expansion is recognized.
Second Los Angeles Aqueduct
The second Los Angeles Aqueduct added transport capacity in order to exhaust the city's water rights permits from the
Mono Basin. It starts at the Haiwee Reservoir, just south of
Owens Lake. Running roughly in parallel to the first aqueduct, it carries water 137 miles. It cost 89 million dollars and was completed in 1970.
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