The Shocking Corruption Behind LA's Water Supply
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- Опубліковано 2 лип 2024
- The story of water supply in Los Angeles is more than a little murky.
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Forget it Jake
thank you for doing a normal sponsor
There’s nothing shocking about LA’s corruption besides how sophisticated it is 😅😂.
Came here to say the exact same thing. 😅
In a race for worst, they'd be neck-and-neck with Las Vegas and Chicago. :/
@@railgap Water conservation wise, Las Vegas is actually really good
San Francisco is better at the game. It drowned a national treasure
Don't forget NYC @@railgap
RIP Robert Towne, the writer of 'Chinatown', who died today.
Wow I just watched Chinatown for the first time last week, great movie. RIP.
he died July 1st not 3rd a quick google search and common sense to google it tells you
No he died 2 days ago
@@willlazenby1050 he passed on the 1st not today but that account wants to spread disinformation like a MAGGOT MAGA does
😂😂so its a stolen account using Chat-GPT 😂😂 what clown sh!t
The structure shown in the thumbnail is actually the State Water Project (i.e. the California Aqueduct), a California state-funded project built in the 1960s that has nothing to do with the Los Angeles Aqueduct.
why let facts get in the way?
Yes, you are correct. There's a bit of video too of the California Aqueduct that comes down the Central Valley to Southern California, which is completely separate from the LA Aqueduct both physically and administratively. Different history entirely.
One thing they missed is how LA county is diverting purified waste water from the water treatment plants and injecting it into the ground. This is to decrease the salinity of the aquifer under LA and make it easier to purify. And due to conservation measures the water used per person is going down so fast that even with the huge increase in population the last 20 years the total water used by the city is going down.
My dad was associated with a small water company in LA county in the 1940's-60's. He showed me the sand-bottom dry rivers like the Rio Hondo. He explained that local water was channeled into these places to soak into the ground, then local water companies could pump it back up into those systems.
You can't talk about the Owens river without talking about the Owens reservoir which was completely drained in this effort to give water to LA.
They also didn’t mention the other two major water sources for southern CA, the California aqueduct and the Colorado river.
and the continuing abuse of the COlorado reiver compact.. Californis contributes nothing in water drainage INTO the river but pulls out far more than it has any sane or justifiable claim to. In the meantime Mexico basically gets f***ed in the ass because there's no flow left by the time it gets there.. thanks to LA basically.
You mean the lake that the local people at that time were draining as fast as possible by truckload for their ranches on land they themselves seized from the aboriginal tribe living there while mining companies were simultaneously dumping their toxic waste into the shallow lake without care? The dry lake which is so toxic from what the people were doing before LA seized the water resources of the region that it eats through good quality rubber boots in less than a month and remains a source of heavy arsenic and other heavy metal contamination in the ground water? LA was just the last ongoing/ most current in a line of negative things that have happened in that region, not the first or only nor the most atrocious, from certain perspectives.
@@brianc2595you OK there buddy?
@@brianc2595 Hold on. Owens Lake (Patsiata in Paiute) was a bitter, highly saline body of water absolutely unsuitable for irrigation by anyone including the local tribes. In fact, the indigenous folk of the Owens Valley (called Payhuünadü) practiced a rudimentary type of irrigation, but drew their water from the streams which flow down from the Sierra. The lake evaporated by the 1920s because of the diversion of the Owens river into the aqueduct. Due to legal victories won by local tribes and environmental conservation groups some water has been restored to the lower Owens River and the lake even became partly refilled after the tremendous snowmelt of 2023, it's a miraculous sight.
A quote from the video called "PBS: Quest for the Lost Maya":
"The Maya had their own version of this sort of landscape-altering infrastructure. The Puuc region of the Yucatan has no natural water sources-no streams, lakes, rivers, or springs. The Maya had to rely on their ingenuity and engineering skills to sustain large populations in this environment."
That’s an aqueduct the Romans built them two thousand years earlier.
@@MrIansmitchell You'd have to watch the whole video. They did a lot more than aqueducts. Aqueducts carry water from one place to another. This particular group of Maya had to engineer the collection of the water in the first place, not just move it around.
@@MrIansmitchell Fascinating, isn't it, that the Old and New worlds were undergoing the same developments at the same time, supposedly without contact?
@@MrVvulf And they had to store it in lined pits, since all the ground is porous. Actually incredible innovation.
@@MrIansmitchell Yeah, that thing that someone did with no prior knowledge isn't fantastic because someone on the other side of the world did it with knowledge borrowed from previous cultures.
Mate, lighten up, the Romans don't care about your cheerleading. Did the Romans use terrace farming?
Tujunga = Tuhunga
Doheney = Do hee knee
Lol, I cringed when he said those names as someone who grew up in LA
Thanks. I was going to type that lol
It’s still a great video but yeah, I winced when I heard those two. Eh, I can only imagine how many Brits wince when Americans gets British names wrong.
He made me do a spit take
@@ElDJReturn You shouldn't have, how on Earth would someone in the UK ever have heard either of those names? You cringe when someone mispronounces something common or fairly common, not at something obscure that only local people would possibly know...
Sadly, the screenwriter of Chinatown (1974), Robert Towne, died two days ago, aged 89.
Legendary film
Wow! So the movie Chinatown was indeed a documentary! Haha. But for real now, judging by the graph at 5:18, the city of LA DESPERATELY needs to up their water recycling. Especially nowadays, they absolutely cannot afford to waste water and just let it all run off into the Pacific.
Agreed. They need to do a lot more to soak in the water.
In Tucson a guy named Brad Lancaster started creating bioswales first at his house, to help harvest rainwater. He did illegal curbcuts and diverted/used streetwater to water decorative landscaping and trees around his yard. His neighbors wondered how he got a green yard (it was a dry barren yard in a dry barren POORER part of town). They too decided to do something similar.
More people showed interest. These streets were more walkable and bikeable, paving showed less buckling, more people out and about reduced crime, swales reduced pollution. It even reduced downstream flooding. They approached the city council and city engineers with these reduced negative impacts. This a informed new city-wide policy to allow more bioswales.
Using native greenery for streetside planting added a unique naturalistic, low maintenance desirability to these neighborhoods, people saved on water bills, home cooling costs went down, people had more food from trees because the bark of trees absorbs the toxins of concern from street runoff, instead of going into the fruit.
The interest and the circle of information keeps widening. Look up the books on rainwater harvesting. Brad Lancaster is a good author, buy his latest editions (or check them out from the library) as they rrally do have more useful info than older ones.
These solutions are useful for building resiliency in a hyperlocalized way. People can benefit from immediately these imediately. I do recommend further research because there is fine tuning that makes them more effective, and reduces downsides otherwise due to poor planning/placement. Homeowners, commercial property owners with huge parking lots, city planners and so forth could all learn...
Pretty much all of California needs to conserve rain water. They were lucky that the last 2 years had alot rain but there will probably be more droughts
The thumbnail doesn’t depict part of City of LA’s supply-wrong but of infrastructure! It’s part of the State Water Project, a massive aqueduct and reservoir system built to serve vast swaths of Southern California. It has zero to do with LA’s covert land grabs in the Owens Valley or the Colorado River aqueduct.
Mulholland, Eaton and Otis created a water grift that has lasted a century.
I concur!
Aaron Burr spent only 100k out of 2M raised to supply water to New York City. He used the rest to start a bank.. today you know them as Chase bank. They used logs instead of proper pipes and did a halfass job.
Uh, wrong. The Chase National Bank was organized September 12, 1877, by John Thompson (1802-91), who named the bank in honour of the late U.S. Treasury secretary Salmon P. Chase. (Thompson had earlier helped found the First National Bank, a predecessor of Citibank and, later, CitiGroup.)
Decades ago some forward thinking people wanted to build desalination plants and the city council said it was too expensive. In hindsight seems like it might have been a great investment.
My father worked for the DWP for almost 40 years so all of this knowledge is almost inherited 😅 If anyone ever drove or lived by the Chatsworth reservoir, we were the people that used to live there and maintain it.
Let that SOAK in ☔
Cute! 😁👍
Yes
that is actually a good pun
let that sink in
"There it is. Take it."
If you want an awesome story, read Water to the Angels.
Not sure how you can avoid talking about William Mulholland
“Forget it Fred! It’s The B1M”. 😄
the fact this video left william mulholland out of the story is criminal
Uh....they obviously couldn't use his name. Noah Cross IS Mulholland. That's who the character is based on
Forgot about Mulholland.
His career came to an end when the St Francis Dam collapsed.
A thorium thermal nuclear reactor distilling water on a gargantuan scale, located on the Santa Catalina Island, is a part of how I would try to solve the problem. Monster fresh water pipes run to the LA basin.
With what money?
@@darthmaul216 Investors money obviously, electrical power is a sought-after commodity, potable water is a sought-after commodity, it's a no brainer really.
@@krashdwhat’s preventing it from happening? Is it a tech thing or like an environmental roadblock
Captain Renault: “I’m shocked! Shocked to find that gambling (corruption) is going on in here.” "Your winnings, sir".
If you get a chance, visit the Owen Valley area, it's beautiful up there.
I'm actually spending my 4th of July holiday there right now!
Just imagine if LA didn't buy up the water rights there would be millions of people living there with jammed up freeways and endless smog.
@@jamestucker8088 Never thought about that. Very interesting and very possibly true. The Inyo River Valley is really great now but can't support a large population. But if it had all the valleys water it would probably have grown so large it would have to import water. The only problem with the valley compered to LA is the summer temperature.
If you're reading this, you have to take a shot every time you're watching a B1M video, and Fred says "...in the world".
You know that it's going to happen and yet you just can't to wait to hear how it will be this time.
Mate, it's 7:00am on the east coast USA. gimme a minute
Drink responsibly everyone.
@@TheB1M The irony being, this is the first video I have ever seen of yours where you didn't say it!
Doheny is pronounced Doheeny. Going back to the peanut gallery now.
I almost died laughing hearing it.
here in the states, we call this the golden triangle = business interests, government agencies, and elected officials. its how destination ski areas are built, how Elon musk has his way with wildlife preserves, and how we enter wars like Iraq and Vietnam. money to made? we can do that. it does not matter if the citizens care, we are mostly too stupid and busy with our work, or our play things.
Robert Towne just died. He wrote CHINATOWN
LA is next to basically limitless water
Your about 15 miles from the Pacific ocean LA, plenty of water there! Start on those desalination plants but it will cost ya!
LA never stopped taking other people’s water, this time from everyone from Northern California. SoCal should invest on desalination instead. They have the whole sea to take water from.
As a resident of the Owens Valley I appreciated the accuracy of your historical outline regarding LA's primary water source. The aqueduct was a huge engineering feat (I am a little surprised you didn't get into the construction aspect more), as well as a huge injustice. Just one little thing: the J in "Tujunga" is pronounced like an H. Always enjoy your channel !
Flying in to LA a few years ago I was amazed to see how much water runs down those channels out to the ocean.
I'd be interested in seeing if there is a big push into residential water capture and storage. I remember as a kid in the 1990s the advertising campaign where I lived in Australia. Its basically standard now that all stand alone houses have to have some sort of water tank storage facility, even if its small, and larger apartment complexes have to have something integrated. Its pretty astonishing how much water you can capture off a roof, and its certainly helped Aussies out during periods of drought.
Awesome project, we can see how important is water
As always a very enjoyable watch 👍
LADWP destroyed the Owen’s valley.
This is great content. Perhaps do a video on how water rights are traded and valued in California and elsewhere around the country. And emphasize how those water rights have been valued over time.
Me hanging out and randomly saying
“Subscribe to the B1M”
My wife - what?
Nothing.
What, you guys just found out about this. Old history and story, plenty of books on the subject.
Guys, I enjoy your videos. Really interesting, thx.
California's water shortage is entirely man made and due to its agriculture policy, a handful of crops and growers use the vast majority of the state's water.
Example:
- Most fruit takes about 10 gallons of water per pound of product
- California is the world's largest almond grower.
- Almonds take 1900 gallons per pound. That is not a typo. It's just insane.
If the state banned (or even just charged regular rates) for stupid stuff like growing almonds or golf courses in a desert then there's be no problem
ua-cam.com/video/glz-Pm6HUG0/v-deo.html
California is the country's largest producer of agricultural products - 40% of which
is exported. This is important from an international trade perspective. So, the state
can't simply ban crops without considering the consequences. BTW rice, a big Cali
crop takes about 300 gallons per pound.
There was a plan to build many desalination plants along the coast. One was built in
Carlsbad which supplies about 10% of the water used in San Diego County. Others
have been nixed by the Coastal Commission over concerns about marine life. This
shows how difficult it is to consider "obvious" options.
Meanwhile, California's population has been flat for ten years @39M+/- 500K. With
no growth, it makes perfect sense to diversify the water source portfolio. Some of
the ideas presented in the video are actually encouraging.
My boy Dallas Raines made it onto B1M.
I can’t watch Dallas. The tan is just awful.
you completely ignored the california aqueduct where So Cal "steals"water from northern california where it belongs.
Loved this, fascinating 👏
Gee who woulda thunk it, making a place livable for Nature would also make it more livable for people
Nature may be the best solution California will have to get enough water.
Nature is the problem. Southern California has been a desert since humanity first came to this part of the world. Now it's just more desert than before and only becoming more so.
When we have lightly regulated corporations and governance that aims to represent only people in power and those unregulated corporations, we will always have a lot of corruption.
Crooked history and all, thank god for their foresight.
Interesting topic, watching now! Any comments posted before this have never watched the goddamn video 😅
6:48 Pretty cool! Never knew the L.A. county began collecting storm water.
I knew about the Sierras but not local containment.
The plan to "unconcrete" the Los Angeles River is going to be very expensive, because they will need to substantially deepen the course of the river to avoid the massive flooding that damaged much of the Los Angeles Basin in the 1930's. That means a lot of very expensive deep dredging and likely re-routing of underground utility lines to accommodate the deepened natural river.
I think we all needed Fred to say “woh-teh” a few more times at the end. 💦
Great video! Look into Cerro Gordo too, above Owens Valley. The real reasons LA exists in the way it does today.
An additional project of great scope if longer term are LA building code changes that require all water that falls on a property with recent major improvements to stay on the property. This means roof rainwater collection, swales or raised planting beds, permeable pavement at driveways and walks, etc. Over time and over the many square miles of private property, this is huge. The water will partially recharge aquifers as it used to before we paved them over.
probably one of my favorite videos! I've been fascinated by this ever since I moved to LA! So glad they are working on this infrastructure and I can't wait to see what they do next with this approach. Also biased because the Owens Valley is my second favorite place in the world besides LA.
No mention of Mulholland, or the St. Francis dam disaster?
Different project. Also Mulholland retired after that disaster because of the horror he had over the failure. A failure that wasn't even his. The survey that said the area was suitable for his construction and didn't find that the ground under the dam would be unstable.
@@brianc2595 the point is that he and the dam were a key part of the Los Angeles/water story. Nothing you posted negates this.
@@arthurm4726 I don't recall this video talking about the California Aqueduct or the aqueduct from the Colorado River either, and those were even more important. This video covers only one aspect of the story, and that does not include the fall of Mulholland either
@@brianc2595 the fact is, the title references the ‘entire’ Los Angeles water story. I guess he decided to be selective in what he covered, but he could have easily put in 10 seconds referencing all the other stories, people, etc., with a quick photo montage, but did not…for those that don’t know, they might assume this one angle was the entire history, when in fact it is not…(the fact he references ‘Chinatown”, which is all about Mulholland, and the dam - among other things - shows that they knew there was more.)
LA is what it is today thanks to a small mine in Cerro Gordo.
Imagine the quality of storm water from a city like la, all brake dust, tyre dust and exhaust particulates, You may as well start drinking leaded fuel…
Never heard this story until today! Very interesting and another great video!
Not only is LA becoming more of a "sponge city" to help capture rainwater but it is also investing in a huge water recycling facilities. Basically recycling toilet water to tap water, which has already been in use in other cities like Las Vegas.
Why not have rain water capture containers built all over, like they do on the Big Island???
Read about the St Francis Dam collapse
Obligatory shocked face -> 🙄
More stormwater presentations please.
Was just thinking of re-watching Chinatown yesterday
Thames water leaves the chat!
😂😂😂
My mate sold a 6 figure Porsche to an exec board member at a water utility firm just last year...they seem to be doing well
imagine if there were large scale desalination plants with all that salt water around them
La is the reason all the towns including mine can't water the fields and orchards.
Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown.
I need to correct you on one thing as an American. This is America, there is no such thing as “Shocking” Corruption. Especially not in LA.
In recent years the Sierra Nevada's have experienced record snow fall so no, as of right now, there isn't a steady decline of snow runoff happening.
General trend is otherwise. Tree-ring records of precipitation anomalies and of temperature allowed them to reconstruct a 500-year history of snow water equivalent in the Sierra Nevada. The researchers found that the low snowpack of April 2015 was “unprecedented in the context of the past 500 years.”
@@joeljong931 Since they started tracking snow in the Sierras in 1946 the two snowiest season's on record were 1982/83 and 2022/23. Snow pack for this year, 2024 was 110 to 115% of average. There's your trend.
A good book that goes into more detail about LA's early beginnings is called, "Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water".
"without one key element" 🤓👆 Actchually water is a compound
@duiofphysics: From OED:
ELEMENT: a part or aspect of something abstract, especially one that is essential or characteristic.
And yes, there are also those little squares in the Periodic Table.
Wasn't there a movie made in the 70s about the water scandals in the late 40s?
I remember a billboard in bakersfeild that read thanks San Joaquin county for polluting our water singed L.A.🤣
Super commonly know stories with hundreds of books and movies covering them and this guy is shocked.
if anything, adapting to new circumstances is key to survival
"There it is. Take it."
If you want an awesome story, read Water to the Angels.
They could hyperlocalize rainwater harvesting thru the use of bioswales. It would support landscaping without taking up more space. Property owners could execute it at minimal cost. LA should promote an eduxational program of using curbcuts to harvest stormwater street runoff. It will reduce the burden on the stormwater drains; reduce brownouts due to reduced energy usage (irrigating requires electricity to fuel gridded pumping); reduce ground subsidence and thus reduce future foundation and other concrete cracking; reduce irrigation equipment maintenance costs; increase shade and beauty; reduce pavement buckling; decrease crime; increase walkability and bikeability; etc.
Distance in kilometres but water in gallons?
Your supposition about Harrison Otis is incorrect, It was Harry Chandler whom bought the majority of real estate knowing full well the future value with a water supply as valuable farmland.
Gotta love the those who look at a waterless land and say, "Hey, lets have millions live here!"
Shocking? It’s been corrupt since day one when they destroyed the beautiful owens valley
It's a bold strategy, Cotton. Lets see if it pays off for 'em.
How does one convert storm water that has flowed on a street into drinking water? LA already has dams at the foot of the mountains to capture much water and "buffer" storm surges. I can see how that water can be used. But for water that has flowed through urbanised area, can it truly be reclaimed into the drinkihg water?
I biked on the San Gabriel river and saw those developments to turn it back into "river" with greater natural retention basins, but was under the impression this was purely a flood control project and not a drinking water one.
LA also gets water from the Colorado rver and has its official aallocation as part of multi state division of the water.
It's our water!
All of it. Ours, all ours.
If it's shocking, you haven't been paying attention.
Sorry mate, most of us aren't like 150 years old to have lived through most these early events
well now we facing serious drought in last decade!!
These events highlight the complex and sometimes dark history of water management in Los Angeles, emphasizing the importance of transparency and ethical governance in public utilities.
It amazes me that the LA water supply was a major plot point in Chinatown (1974) and yet we see it being dysfunctional still 50 years later.
why not also build some de-salination plants to support rain water capture?
Chicago can tap into lake Michigan and use the deep tunnel water too
I had to listen 7 times to understand that he said "China town" . I had not seen the film.
Then your life is not complete.
nice one
Nice to see some critical content on this channel.
Could you make a video on the the abandoned LA skyscrapers? It’s an, in my opinion, interesting topic and would make for a good title and thumbnail!
Chinese company goes bankrupt. Towers left unfinished. Soon to be auctioned off
Isn't it interesting that la is burning now.
Seems this was the basis of the animated movie Rango !
Oh LA, the city full of people who complain about environmental problems while destroying several environments around them so they can live in a desert without feeling like they're in a desert.
Is this still shocking? There've been movies made about it. Good to see it covered on the B1M though.
THIS CAN BE FIXED IN ONE DAY. SO SAD....
I always thought it was weird that were "city of Los Angeles" signs all over the place near Mammoth. This needs to be fixed.
They'll never be a "fix"