| Because water is not naturally equally distributed throughout the state, Federal (the U.S. government), State, and Local agencies have stepped in to deliver water where it is needed. Water projects have been recorded as far back as the founding of the San Diego Mission in 1769 (DWR Bulletin 160-98, p. 1-12). Another local project of historic dimensions is the Los Angeles Aqueduct. Engineered by the self-taught William Mulholland, this 1913 gravity-flow aqueduct (a canal whose water flows downhill) sustained the growth of Los Angeles and its suburbs. It also began one of the first major conflicts in water rights, with Owens Valley farmers claiming that Los Angeles “stole” their water. This was a great saga in the western water wars – with deceit, dynamite, greed, lost friendships, and a sad ending in the Saint Francis dam failure - and it is a story well worth the time spent reading about. In 1934, San Francisco’s Hetch Hetchy local project was completed. This, too, was a controversial project as it damned the Hetch Hetchy Valley – a neighbor to Yosemite and said to be as beautiful. The All-American Canal, a federal project along the Mexican border, was completed in 1940. In 1941, the local Colorado River Aqueduct began importing water to Los Angeles. Shasta Dam, a federal project and the state’s largest reservoir, was completed in 1945 (DWR, Bulletin 160-98, p. 1-11). These were the days of reclamation (making runoff water usable), where no dam went unbuilt. Then things slowed down. In 1968, Oroville Dam, a state project, was completed. 1973 saw the completion of the California Aqueduct, which ran a course from the Delta to Southern California. |
