Delta Tunnel voices the California Water Control Errors

By Devon Provo, special for Calmatters

This comment was originally published by CalmattersS Register about their ballots.

Most mornings walk my dog Hahamongna Waterershed Park In Pasadena, stopping from the tank to observe how the paddles and ducks slide on the water. This is a quiet routine, but from Fire Through Eaton Canyon in January, silence feels stronger, and this place has something to say.

As an urban planning I have spent years working on the use of land and Water policyS When I go through my Altadan neighborhood, I don’t see a surprising crash. I see a moment of reading in a much older story about the pursuit of nature control and the consequences that have echoed over the generations.

So Switch to quick tracking of the Delta transportation projectpresenting MPs with a familiar choice. But before we are making billions for another major water project, we have to face some heavy lessons of our past.

Eaton Canyon was named after Judge Benjamin Ethan, Anglo-American settler, who built the first water infrastructure of Pasadena in the 1860s. Eaton designs irrigation ditches to support agriculture and the development of real estate, diverting the water away from the Hamongon, a place called “flowing waters, a fruitful valley” by the original inhabitants of Tongwa. His intervention added to a harmful model, which began with the Spanish mission system, when the violent colonization of the village of Hamennene disrupted the sacred relations of the community with land and water.

Ethan’s son, Frederick, later expanded his father’s ambitions on a larger scale. As mayor of Los Angeles in the early 1900s, Frederick Eaton partnered with William Multiwland to develop La Aqueduct, a massive transportation system that redirects water from Lake Mono and Owes Valley – called Payahuunadü by Locals.

It was one of the most significant and destructive transfers of water in the history of the United States, which devastated ecosystems and homes of people from Newyum, Newy and Kutduka. Owens Lake, also called Patsiata, was once full of life. After drying, Became the largest source of dust pollution In the country, exposure to close toxins, which increase the risk of cancer.

The consequences were not limited to the Eastern Sierra. Angelos also suffers.

Aqueduct performed Los Angeles with a extraction model that has been going on for more than a century. Today, we are often told that LA is a desert, darkening the truth that rivers, wetlands and groundwater that shaped this region did not disappear – they were buried, paved and drained.

Instead of investing in local solutions such as the recording of rainwater, recycled water and fire control, Los Angeles prioritized the import of water, urban dispersion and fire practices in the 20th century, leaving it increasingly disaster.

The result: LA’s rainwater rushes to the ocean through concrete ducts, bypassing the thirsty soil under our feet. Adapted by fire Chapalus, once prone through local cultural burns, goes misunderstood and poorly managed. The fire always finds its fuelS

This heritage did not cause Ethan’s fire, but sowed conditions that allowed him to spread and devastate. In the end, the truth is catching up with us. The Earth remembers what we are trying to forget.

In the meantime, politicians rely on public amnesia. The Governor’s last impetus for providing legislative approval for the transport of Delta before the session ends in September risks repeating the story. The success of this mega -project for diverting water depends on the same myth of control, the illusion that people stand separately from the ecosystems themselves, which support us, that the useless attempts at domination can protect us from the fragile, uncomfortable reality of our interdependence with nature.

A tragedy like Ethan’s fire reminds us that true leadership begins with humility, with the courage to look at ourselves strongly and to admit that we are in relationships with living systems, not at the forefront.

If the destruction can be built at one choice at one time, so it can be fixed.

In Payahuunadü, the Indian Water Valley Commission Owens continues to fight for the justice of water and the right to take care of Owens Lake. Here, in Los Angeles, the tribal governments and the groups led by the indigenous population, such as the Institute for Conservation of Land and Sacred Places, work to restore the lands of ancestors, revive local plants and raise traditional environmental knowledge.

Throughout the region, groups of local organs repair relations with water and soil, plant local trees, remove asphalt and turn concrete school yards into live landscapes. Local agencies are becoming serious about the decisions we have long ignored: catching rainwater, recycled water, recharging groundwater and conservation.

Fire Eaton is the last chapter in Long Eaton history. The name, which is once celebrated for the tame of water, now symbolizes a fire that reveals the boundaries of our control.

The irony invites a more in -depth question: What does accountability look like when the harm is inherited, but the consequences are still unfolding? The control we are looking for can already reside in us – in our ability to exercise restraint, to respect restrictions and to remain in connection with things that we do not fully understand.

Like those before us, we are confronted with complex compromises. But unlike them, we have the benefit of the background and the possibility, if we are ready, to choose another way. Will we take it?

This article was Originally Published on CalMatters and was reissued under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Noderivatives License.