The story of how L.A. diverted the Owens River more than 90 years ago—draining a lake and leaving behind a toxic dust bowl—is one that English professor Piper (Cartographic Fictions
) takes personally. She grew up breathing wind-borne arsenic-laced dust lifted from Owens Lake; her lungs are permanently scarred and her sinuses damaged. It's thus disappointing that this history of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power's corrupt grab for Owens Valley water, and the coverup of the consequent environmental disaster, doesn't pack more of a punch. In a scenario familiar to anyone who saw Polanski's film Chinatown,
Piper lays out facts cogently enough: the capitalist villainy that enriched the young city's white elite nearly a century ago, when work started on the L.A. Aqueduct; the devastating impact of the water's diversion on both Paiute tribes and local farmers; and how the project led to "white flight" from neighborhoods around the Los Angeles River, which was dwindling to a polluted trickle in a trench. Unfortunately, the damning accumulation of accusations, though well documented, is lost in a prose style as opaque as the horrific dust storms the author describes. B&w photos. (Aug.)
