Los Angeles Department of Water and Power

Headquarters building of the Department of Water and Power

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) is the largest municipal utility in the United States, serving over 4 million residents as of 2008. It was founded in 1902 to supply water and electricity to residents and businesses in Los Angeles and surrounding communities. The LADWP receives no tax support, and contributes about $190 million annually to the revenues of the City of Los Angeles.

History

Privately owned predecessors

In the middle of the 19^th century, Los Angeles's rapid population growth magnified problems with the city’s water distribution system. At that time, a system of open ditches, often polluted, was reasonably effective at supplying water to agriculture, but was not suitable to providing water to homes. In 1853, the city council rejected a closed-pipe system that would serve homes directly as "excessive." As a solution, the city allowed "water carriers with jugs and horse-drawn wagons…to serve the city’s domestic [water] needs". It took until 1857 for the council to realize that the system needed to be updated, which led them to grant William G. Dryden franchise rights to provide homes with water through a system of underground water mains. The initial system, however, served only a few homes using an unreliable network of wooden pipes. In December 1861, heavy rains destroyed the system and Dryden gave up his franchise. The city attempted contracting out water distribution rights to others, but none of the systems that resulted from these contracts were successful.

The city’s previous unsuccessful attempts to allow others to develop a water system on its behalf prompted that council to relinquish its rights to the water in the Los Angeles River in 1868. The council’s decision to give up its water rights benefited John S. Griffen, Solomon Lazard, and Prudent Beaudry, three already successful businessmen, at the expense of the city of Los Angeles, which had relinquished its legal right to benefit from their municipal water distribution business. The three men created the Los Angeles City Water Company, which violated so many of the provisions of its lease on the Los Angeles River, most significantly, secretly tunneling under the river to extract 150 times as much water as the lease allowed — that in the mid-1890s, as the end on the lease drew near, “popular support began to build for a return to complete municipal control of the local water supply”.

Reestablishing public control

The leader in the fight to end private control of the water supply was Fred Eaton. Eaton proposed that the tax revenues would enable the city of Los Angeles to provide water to its residents without charging them for the use of water directly. Eaton’s views were especially powerful because of “his distinguished record of achievement rendered in both the private and public sector”. During Eaton’s nine-year term as the superintending engineer of the Los Angeles City Water Company he headed a large expansion of the company’s water system. Eaton left his position in 1886 when he was elected City Engineer. In his new public position, Eaton devoted his time to the updating and expansion of the sewer system. Eaton felt that the Los Angeles City Water Company was not serving the citizens of Los Angeles in the best way possible because of high rates and the fact the company frequently paid dividends to its stockholders instead of improving the water system. In early 1897 city engineers began creating plans for an updated water system while the city council informed the Los Angeles City Water Company that its lease would not be renewed beyond its expiration date, July 21, 1898. In early 1898, the city began talks with the Los Angeles City Water Company about taking over the company’s current water system.

Throughout the negotiations it became clear that it was necessary for the current senior employees of the Los Angeles City Water Company to keep their jobs in order to ensure that the water system could continue to operate. It was not guaranteed, however, that William Mulholland, Eaton’s protégé and the man who took over the job of superintending engineer when Eaton was elected city engineer, would have a position working with the city-owned water system. Mulholland was not popular with city officials because he did not produce any records that city requested during negotiations. Near the end of the talks between the city and the water company it was discovered that neither the records the city had requested nor a map of the water system existed. Mulholland, who was supposed to be in charge of the non-existent records, was never a fan of paperwork and claimed that he had memorized all of the necessary information, including “the size of every inch of pipe and the age and location of every valve”. Mulholland secured a job with the city when he successfully demonstrated his ability to recall the information. Once Mulholland was assured a job with the city he “promptly intervened with the company’s principal stockholder, advising him to accept the city’s offer of two million dollars for the system”.

History of electric power delivery

The LADWP first offered municipal electricity in 1917, when the San Francisquito Power Plant began generating electricity. It ultimately produced 70.5 megawatts and is still in operation in 2004, producing 44.5 megawatts.

On January 17, 1994, the City of Los Angeles experienced its one and only total system black-out as a result of the Northridge Earthquake. Much of the power was restored within a few hours.

The California power crisis of 2001 had very little impact on the citizens of Los Angeles due to the LADWP's conservative approach to electricity deregulation.

Notable events and controversies

In 1928 the St. Francis Dam, built and operated by the LADWP, collapsed catastrophically due to its east flank being unwittingly built on an active landslide zone. Four hundred-fifty people died in the immediate vicinity, but the overall death toll was mitigated by prompt warnings sent to downriver communities in the Santa Clara River Valley, including Fillmore, Santa Paula, and San Buenaventura. From the wreckage of the dam collapse rose the modern field of geological engineering. Mulholland assumed full responsibility for the disaster and its pall continued to hang over him until his death in 1935.

Main article: California Water Wars

The LADWP has been a leading actor in the struggle over access to water from the Owens Valley, starting with its initial acquisition of water rights, as well as buying out farms and asserting control over Mono Lake and Owens Lake.

The LADWP and William Mulholland played a key role in the development of Hoover Dam and bringing its energy to Los Angeles. The LADWP continued to operate the Hoover Dam Electrical facility until 1987.

Operational Systems

Power System

The LADWP currently maintains a generating capacity of 7,200 megawatts, in excess of the peak demand of the City of Los Angeles of 6,165 megawatts (Hawkins 2007, p.10). It provides this surplus electricity to other utilities, selling 23 million megawatt-hours in 2003. As of 2005, the LADWP operates four natural gas-fired generators within city boundaries, which account for 26% of capacity (Hawkins 2007, p.10). It receives 52% of its electricity from coal-fired plants, either within the City, or in Utah, Arizona, and Nevada (Hawkins 2007, p.12). A further 11% is generated using nuclear power (Hawkins 2007, p.10). It also receives about 6% of its electricity from hydropower, most coming from Hoover Dam and the rest coming from the aqueduct system itself (Hawkins 2007, p.14). The LADWP, along with the California Department of Water Resources, also operates the Castaic Pumped Storage Power Station, at which water flows down from the upper resevour during the day, generating power, and is then pumped back up at night when the electricity that drives the pumps is cheaper. About 1,600 megawatts, or 22% of the total capacity, is generated at this facility alone (Hawkins 2007, p.14). The Los Angeles City Council voted in 2004 to direct the LADWP to generate 20% of its energy (excluding Hoover Dam) from clean sources by 2010 (Hawkins 2007, p.14). Current "green power" sources account for 5% of the LADWP's capacity, but there are plans to add a 120 megawatt wind farm in Tehachapi, California, and produce electricity from geothermal sources in the Salton Sea area and photovoltaic sources (Hawkins 2007, p.14).

Because Los Angeles is older than most other cities in California, the LADWP is currently faced by several unique issues. Most of the power lines in Los Angeles were built above-ground before it became customary to run power lines below-ground; as a result, the horizon line of the typical Los Angeles boulevard looks much more cluttered than boulevards in most Southern California cities. LADWP has been continuing a long-term project to convert overhead power lines to underground. This difficult conversion has been slowed by budget constraints, the impact on traffic, the pursuit of other modernization projects, and the lingering effects of a workforce reduction over the last decade. Budget issues are particularly acute in the Department's transmission system, where underground transmission costs about 10 to 14 times the cost of overhead transmission, per unit length, and the technical and environmental challenges which confront such installations. The Department recently completed two 230 kV underground projects, using an innovative cable technology which does not utilize oil as an insulator. The oil-less cable mitigates the environmental issues associated with oil-type cable.

Water System

The LADWP provided more than 200 billion US gallons (760 billion liters) of water in 2003, pumping it through 7,226 miles (11,629 km) of pipe. In fiscal year 2004-2005:

• 48% of the water came from the Sierra Nevada mountains via the Los Angeles Aqueduct;
• 41% came from the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which transports water from the California Aqueduct and Colorado River Aqueduct;
• 11% was from local groundwater, a resource that is actively managed and allocated, but is continually being threatened by chemical pollutants, such as MTBE and perchlorates;
• 1% came from recycled water, and was used for irrigation, recreation, and industrial purposes.

The use of water from specific sources can vary greatly from year to year.

The prospect of increased demand, along with reduced supply from the Mono and Owens basins, is causing the LADWP look into a number of new water sources, including a new direct connection to the California Aqueduct, increased use of recycled water, and possibly a desalination plant to make use of the salt water from the Pacific Ocean at Playa del Rey.

Many of the old pipelines are beginning to wear out, or are at capacity and are insufficient to handle future demand. LADWP has undertaken pipeline replacement projects on many L.A. boulevards, like Exposition and Olympic; but the necessary lane closures have only worsened the city's chronic traffic congestion.

Media portrayals

Unusually for a municipal public utility, LADWP has been mentioned several times in popular culture, both fiction and nonfiction.

• The 1974 Roman Polanski film Chinatown (starring Jack Nicholson) sets its story around LADWP's efforts to acquire land and water rights.

• In 1982, the University of California Press published William L. Kahrl's book, Water and Power: The Conflict over Los Angeles’ Water Supply in the Owens Valley (Template:ISBNlink). The book examined the development of water policy in the American West, particularly concentrating on the role of William Mulholland and the LADWP.

• The 1986 book Cadillac Desert: The American West and its Disappearing Water by Marc Reisner (Template:ISBNlink) is about land development and water policy in the western United States. The subsequent television documentary of the same name devotes an entire episode to Mulholland's Dream to provide plentiful water for Los Angeles.

• The 1995 movie Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie makes reference to the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. The movie takes place in a fictional city modeled after Los Angeles. In one of the movie's scenes, after finding a mysterious object in the ground on a construction site, one construction worker asks another, "what in the world is this?" The other construction worker replies "well it sure as heck ain't DWP."

See also

• Intermountain Power Agency
• Metropolitan Water District of Southern California

References

• Hawkins, J. (Nov. 2007). "Power to the People", Alive!

External links

• LADWP Home Page
• Mono Lake Committee (won Mono Lake protection from excessive LADWP water diversions)
• Owens Valley Committee (sued LADWP over water)