The Drought Recovery Policy (DRP) is an overlay on the Water Agreement. By instituting controls on groundwater pumping beyond those specified in the on/off procedures in the Green Book, the DRP provides insurance that the vegetation protection goals of the Water Agreement will be met. The DRP has assumed great importance because the Inyo County … Read more
Left–The lower Owens River channel in December 2006. Right–Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa (foreground) meets habitat flows on the lower Owens in February 2008. Since 1913, Los Angeles’ surface water diversions and groundwater pumping in the Owens Valley have destroyed springs and seeps, dried the Owens Lake and the lower Owens River, and caused … Read more
Los Angeles’s acquisition of virtually all land and water on the floor of Owens Valley, and the resulting status of the valley as a resource colony underlies almost all questions of Owens Valley resource management. Rather than attempting to directly remedy this historic injustice, the OVC has, instead, sought an indirect remedy through enforcement of … Read more
TS1 and TS3: a tale of two sites A wildfire in early July 2007 burnt a large area on the valley floor, including two permanent monitoring sites established close to Blackrock Springs under the Inyo-LA Long Term Water Agreement. Both sites were grass-dominated and mapped as groundwater dependent meadow when established in 1987 and 1988. … Read more
2/15/2014 March 22, 2014 OVC fund raising event to feature Bill Powers OVC is pleased to announce that Bill Powers, an expert on distributed solar power generation (aka “Solar Done Right”) will speak at our annual fund raising event Saturday March 22, 2014 at the Mountain Light Gallery, 106 Main St., Bishop, CA. The event … Read more
A writer for station KCET in Los Angeles, the nation’s largest independent public television station, visited Owens Valley last December and found it a “life changing experience.” His story, including quotes from OVC Board members Mary Roper and Daniel Pritchett is at https://www.kcet.org/shows/lost-la/paiute-la-aqueduct-owens-valley.
Legal and political background In 1913 Los Angeles diverted Owens River from its channel leading to Owens Lake, into an aqueduct leading to Los Angeles. Thus began the drying of Owens Lake. By 1924 the drying was complete and the dried lakebed was becoming a major source of air pollution in the form of blowing … Read more
On September 5, 2000, Owens Valley botanist and conservationist Mary DeDecker passed away. She was 91 years old and had lived in Independence with her husband, Paul, for 65 years. Mary started the Bristlecone Chapter of the California Native Plant Society in 1982 and added immensely to our knowledge of the flora of eastern California. … Read more
Note: The article below was written in 2005. In 2013 only a few edits were necessary. The problems discussed have only worsened since the article was first posted. Also see our Blackrock and Symmes Disaster pages or our groundwater brochure [PDF] Introduction Figure 2. This pedestal sports living sprigs of meadow bunchgrass, Sporobolus airoides, in this photo taken in 2007. The … Read more