The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1912-01-19
The Wonderful Physical Features
 Of The AqueduCt
From End to End.

precious thing-the pearl without
 price. To have conception of it's worth i one must see the land athirst and feel the thirst oneself.
 | Throughout the larger portion of the 1 United States. each season brings it's
 perennial rainfall; sunshine is follow | lowed by storm and storm is succeed ed by sunshine. But in the great Southwest the annual precipitation is
 confined to a few short months where- i in nature is rarely generous with he1 1 tears. It is a land that is always,
 always thirsty.
 i Well within this semi-arfd region, | the Mission Fathers more than a cen
 tury and quarter ago laid the foun- dations for what is to-day the mod
 ern city of Los Angeles The water and for irrigation they diverted from | a shallow stream-the Los Angeles 1 River-which finds it's source in the Sierra Madre Range, flows through times when in flood reaches the Pa cif1c ocean. As the years passed, the pueblo gained the importance of a town, then a city and finally it be- came the metropolis of the Southwest.
 With growth came the need of a larger domestic water supply and to furnish this the water was gradually withdrawn from the irrigation ditches. Little homes with their front lawns and their back door gardens took the place of orchards and vineyards The entire surface flow of the river was turned into the water works mains but still the influx of population con tinued and with population came the demand for more water. The private water company being unable. to cope with the situation, the municipality purchased the corporations proper ties and in February of 1902 began the purveying of it's own water. Tunnels were now driven under the bed of tap the subterranean flow; but even with this addition it was seen that the supply. while then sufficient, must soon become inadequate.
 Years of drouth came. The Los Angeles River dwindled in it's size. In the San Fernando Valley. which supplies the underground now of the stream. the city enjoined the ranchers, through the courts, from pumping for irrigation even on their own lanos Consumption within the city was cur tailed by the installation of meters.
 The Underground Levels.
 Despite these safeguards, .investiga- tors of the United States government found that the underground water lev els in the Pacific Coastal Plan were slowly receding. For more than a de- cade man had been drawing on the subterranean reservoirs of mature faster than she could. replenish them obtainab1e. The waters of every stream flowing down the western face of the Coast Range had long ago been exempted either to support the life of other communities or to fatten lands upon which hourished many groves of orange and lemon.
 Los Angeles in her search for more water was not moved through choice but was driven by necessity to seek her larger supply in the businesses of the Sierra Nevadas. This source is the Owens River. The public work now underway to carry the waters of this stream across the MOjave Desert, the city's gates is the most daring water works project of which history gives us. any record. The total dis tance is 250 miles When completed 1t will be the longest aqueduct in the world The system of storage and regulating reservoirs as an auxiliary to the aQueduct will equal or surpass the reservoir systems of the Far East
 Having fixed firmly in our minds the causes that have brought about this public enterprise, let us investi- gate its various features. Firstly, where the Los Angeles River is ca pable of supplying 55,000OOO gallons day under the favorable circumstan- ces of years of average rainfall, the auueduct will be able to deliver a minimum of 25s.000000 gallons every twenty-four hours. Moreover by the reservoirs, the unused surplus of the rainy season will be stored so that the daily supply during the seven hot months of summer Gin which little or no. rain faIls) can be increased to more than 300 OOO, ,000- gallons daily. This food at the present time finds its way through the owens River . ana lIllO Owens Lake. an alkaline sink on the northern edge of the Moiave where it serves no man and no useful purpose.
 Beginning of the Aqueduct.
 Properly the aqueduct begins at the diversion of the waters of the Owens River eleven miles north of the town of Independence in the Owens Valley. where the elevation of the stream is Approaching the diversion point from the north, ones first view of the aque- duct is a broad thick wall of cement. In this are set heavy gates of steel. With these open, the water will begin it's journey of 250 miles southward to the4 city of Los Angeles.
 aqueduct consist of an open canal, sixty feet wide and ten feet deep, which is being excayated by powerful dredges driven by electricity. In aQueduct is nothing more than Strengthened and better river channel It is not lined with concrete for the reason that the underground flow Of the valley will contribute to the quan- .tity of water obtained from the river itself.
 tist Brown, one sees slow range of mountains jutting into the mouth of the Owens Valley. These are the of which the aqueduct assumes a new shape and character. For the next thirty mine miles the water is carried
 
 nineteen feet wide and thirteen feet deep. Following the contour of the mountainside this conduit carries the water at an elevation 200 feet high CT than the surface of owens Lake and empties into the Haiwee Reser- voir. This conduit has a capacity of more than 800 100000 gallons per day, much larger than the normal ctr- pacity farther to the south for the req son that the oods of the first warm days of early summer in the mountain snow fields must be provided for. The HaiWee Reservoir will not only serve as a storage basin for these floods but it will clarify and regulate the flow for 133 miles below it's gates. In building this reservoir the city's en- purpose what nature long ago aban- doned as being of no further use to her The reservoir site is a part of the old channel of the Owens River before some convulsion of nature rais- ed the land a few miles to the north and crea ted the present basin of the Owens Lake. The Haiwee reservoir