Source: https://www.uclalawreview.org/local-control-of-land-and-water-resources-rethinking-californias-eminent-domain-standard/
Timestamp: 2019-04-19 02:25:46+00:00

Document:
On February 14, 2018, the County of Inyo filed a condemnation action against Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) in Inyo County Superior Court. The filings request the court to approve Inyo County’s acquisition by eminent domain of three landfills located in Owens Valley of California’s Eastern Sierra Nevada Mountains.1 Inyo County’s legal action comes after more than a century of conflict over Owens Valley’s land and water between the Owens Valley residents and the City of Los Angeles. As an eminent domain action between two municipal entities, Inyo County must demonstrate its ability to put the properties to a “more necessary public use” than LADWP.2 The court’s ruling will reflect on California’s history of prioritizing urban over rural development and the potential for local governments to regain control of natural resources from absentee rights holders.
The court should incorporate the value of local community control of land and water in its determination of what constitutes “more necessary public use.” Approving the condemnation action and placing the landfills’ land and water rights with Inyo County would confer greater opportunity for its population to provide input on the administration of resources through local politics and civic engagement. This precedent would endorse a vision of eminent domain’s public use standard beyond economic valuation, to encourage natural resource use that is responsive to the priorities of the surrounding population.
When California became a state in 1850, its arid climate necessitated a new system of water rights to encourage mass migration and settlement. Tension between California’s hasty adoption of common law and the reliance of California’s early gold mining and agricultural industries on irrigation resulted in a water regime that recognized both riparian and prior appropriation water rights.3 Riparian rights, used in the eastern United States, gives water rights to owners of land adjacent to the water source. Prior appropriation allocates water rights to the first-in-time productive user of the water, allowing for diversion of water from its original source. Prior appropriation was convenient to administer in the absence of a land office4 and rewarded settlers’ “entrepreneurial” efforts.5 Legal recognition of prior appropriation water rights allowed settlers to claim private ownership of resources, thereby encouraging and rewarding settlement in California.
Meanwhile, Californian coastal cities like LA experienced explosive population growth. In just fifty years, from 1860 to 1910, LA’s population grew from 4385 to 319,198 people.9 Water was the most important factor in the history and growth of LA.10 Early on, the Los Angeles River sufficiently provided water to LA, but finding new sources of water was essential to sustaining LA’s population growth.
LA’s efforts to appropriate Owens Valley’s water contradicted the initial objectives of federal investment in California. The federal government offered aid to construct irrigation systems to convert the arid and semiarid land into an ecosystem suitable for agriculture.13 LA and Mulholland worked with the Bureau of Reclamation, however, to ensure residents of Owens Valley never received federal aid, increasing the likelihood that farmers would sell their lands.14 In 1906, U.S. Congress passed an act that gave LADWP right of way access to build an aqueduct from Owens Valley to LA.15 Congress’s approval of the LA Aqueduct directly endorsed siphoning water from Owens Valley, prioritizing the urban city’s growth.
The LA Aqueduct was completed in 1913.16 Throughout the 1920s, however, Owens Valley residents protested against LADWP, including dynamiting sections of the aqueduct pipeline and kidnapping LADWP agents. As the protests intensified, LADWP distributed propaganda depicting Owens Valley residents as lawbreakers, attempting to sway public opinion in LA.17 Because LADWP is a municipally owned utility company, LA residents directly influence LADWP’s projects through city elections. An early example of LA residents exerting voter power over LADWP came in 1911, when voters approved construction of hydroelectric sites along the aqueduct. The installation of hydroelectric sites on the LA Aqueduct improved LA’s energy self-reliance but also intensified the financial stake LA had in the productivity of the LA Aqueduct and the continued flow of water from Owens Valley. Today, LADWP is the largest municipal utility in the United States, serving nearly four million people18 and contributing, as of recently, roughly $250 million to LA’s annual budget.19 Inyo County residents lack similar opportunity to voice input through civic procedures. Instead, they must rely on litigation to challenge LADWP in court for the threat or realization of harm resulting from LADWP’s conduct.
Danelle Bacoch Guterriez, THPO for Big Pine Paiute-Shoshone Tribe, added she hopes the Board of Supervisors understands “the value Tribes hold in those resources and the health issues involved.”33 With LADWP’s profits at odds with the priorities of Owens Valley residents, Bancroft’s and Guterriez’s remarks demonstrate the difficulties of compelling an absentee rights holder to work equitably with the local population.
 Eminent domain is the government’s taking of private property for a “public use” with “just compensation.” See Cal. Const. art. 1, § 19(a).
 See Complaint in Condemnation & Demand for Jury Trial ¶ 3, Inyo County v. L.A. Dep’t of Water & Power, No. SICVCV-1862064 (Cal. Super. Ct. Feb. 14, 2018); Complaint in Condemnation & Demand for Jury Trial ¶ 3, Inyo County v. L.A. Dep’t of Water & Power, No. SICVCV-1862065 (Cal. Super. Ct. Feb. 14, 2018); Complaint in Condemnation & Demand for Jury Trial ¶ 3, Inyo County v. L.A. Dep’t of Water & Power, No. SICVCV-1862067 (Cal. Super. Ct. Feb. 14, 2018); cf. Cal. Const. art. 1, § 19(a), (c)-(d).
 See e.g., Lux v. Haggin, 4 P. 919 (Cal. 1884).
 See Robert G. Dunbar, Forging New Rights in Western Waters 61 (1983).
 See Barton H. Thompson, Jr., John D. Leshy & Robert H. Abrams, Legal Control of Water Resources 191, 238 (5th ed. 2013).
 See John W. Key, The Owens Valley Indian War 1861-1865 (unpublished thesis, U.S. Army Command and General Staff Coll., 1979), http://vredenburgh.org/tehachapi/data/owenswar.htm.
 See Owens Valley Paiute, Nat’l Park Serv., https://www.nps.gov/manz/learn/historyculture/owens-valley-paiute.htm (last updated Feb. 28, 2015).
 Historical General Population City & County of Los Angeles, 1850 to 2010, L.A. Almanac, http://www.laalmanac.com/population/po02.php (last visited Sept. 16, 2018).
 Raphael J. Sonenshein, Los Angeles: Structure of a City Government, The League of Women Voters of L.A. 94 (2006), https://my.lwv.org/sites/default/files/leagues/los-angeles/structureofacity.pdf.
 See County. of Inyo v. Yorty, 108 Cal. Rptr. 377, 380 (Cal. Ct. App. 1973).
 See Reclamation Act of 1902, Pub. L. No. 161, ch. 1093 (1902).
 See Thompson et al., supra note 5, at 240.
 Act. of June 30, 1906, ch. 3926, § 4, 30 Stat. (1906) (enacted).
 Los Angeles Aqueduct, History (2010), http://www.history.com/topics/los-angeles-aqueduct.
 See Leslie Maryann Neal, 1924 Owens Valley Protests Foreshadow California’s Scary Drought Problems, All That’s Interesting (Aug. 21, 2014), 2.
 See L.A. Dep’t of Pub. Works, Urban Water Management Plan ES-6 (2015).
 See Despite Public Criticism, DWP Transfers $241.8 Million to LA’s General Fund, L.A. Daily News (Nov. 28, 2017, 5:58 PM), https://www.dailynews.com/2017/11/28/despite-public-criticism-dwp-transfers-241-8-million-to-las-general-fund/.
 See L.A. Dep’t of Pub. Works, supra note 18.
 See County of Inyo v. Yorty, 108 Cal. Rptr. 377, 380 (Cal. Ct. App. 1973).
 Owens Lake Background, Great Basin Unified Air Pollution Control District, http://www.gbuapcd.org/OwensLake/Background/ (last visited Sept. 21, 2018); see also County of Inyo v. Pub. Utils. Comm’n, 604 P.2d 566, 567 (Cal. 1980).
 PM10 is particulate matter which measures less than 10 microns in diameter. Measurements find the air in excess of the National Ambient Air Quality Standard for PM10 more than fifty miles away from the lake, believed to include 40,000 people. See Owens Lake Background, supra note 22.
 See Stipulation & Order for Judgement at 10, County of Los Angeles v. Bd. of Supervisors, No. 12908 (Cal. Super. Ct. Oct. 18, 1991); Ramboll Environ, Great Basin Unified Air Pollution Control District, 2016 Owens Valley Planning Area PM10 State Implementation Plan (2016).
 See Owens Valley Committee Responds to LA Mayor Garcetti, Sierra Wave Media (July 22, 2015), http://www.sierrawave.net/owens-valley-committee-responds-to-la-mayor-garcetti/.
 See Chris Hayes, LA Mayor Garcetti on Adapting to Historic Drought, MSNBC (July 14, 2015), https://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/la-mayor-garcetti-on-adapting-to-historic-drought-484366915772; see also Sierra Wave Media, supra note 25.
 See Sierra Wave Media, supra note 25.
 See Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), Pub. L. No. 101-106, 104 Stat. 3048 (1990) (codified as amended at 25 U.S.C. §§ 3001–3013 (2018)).
 See Cal. State Assemb. Bill No. 52, ch. 532 (2014).
 Meeting Minutes for September 12, 2017, Bd. Supervisors Cty. Inyo (Sept. 12, 2017), https://www.inyocounty.us/Board_of_Supervisors/Minutes/2017-09-12.pdf. An example of why tribal monitors need to be present for dust mitigation efforts came in 2013, when LADWP archaeologists uncovered evidence of an 1863 massacre on the lakebed. Remarking on the massacre Bancroft stated, “We take this personally—my grandmother told me about this massacre and she knew the people it happened to. . . . This ground, and the artifacts in it, is who we are.” The massacre occurred during the Owens Valley Indian Wars when settlers and U.S. military soldiers chased thirty-five Paiute Shoshone Indians into Owens Lake where they were shot or drowned. See Louis Sahagun, DWP Archaeologists Uncover Grim Chapter in Owens Valley History, L.A. Times (June 2, 2013), http://articles.latimes.com/2013/jun/02/local/la-me-massacre-site-20130603.
 Meeting Minutes for September 12, 2017, supra note 32, at 5.
 Cal. Civ. Proc. Code § 1240.610 (West 2018).
 See Cal. Civ. Proc. Code § 1240.670-1240.680 (West 2018).
 See Joris Naiman, Note, Judicial Balancing of Uses for Public Property: The Paramount Public Use Doctrine, 17 B.C. Envtl. Aff. L. Rev. 893, 911 (1990); see also Cal. Civ. Proc. Code § 1220.050 (West 2018) (allocating discretion in condemnation actions to the judiciary).
 Craig M. Wilson, California's Area of Origin Laws: A Report to the State Water Resources Control Board and the Delta Stewardship Council 5 Cal. Water Bds. (2013), https://www.waterboards.ca.gov/board_info/agendas/2013/oct/100813_7origin.pdf; see Thompson et al., supra note 5, at 238.
 For example, some area of origin laws only apply to permits and licenses granted after the enactment of California’s Water Code. Therefore, these laws do not apply to LADWP’s pre-1914 appropriator, riparian, or percolating ground water rights. Joseph L. Sax, Reserved Public Rights in Water, 36 Vt. L. Rev. 535, 541 n.25 (2012).
 See Wilson, supra note 37.
 See Complaint in Condemnation & Demand for Jury Trial, No. SICVCV 186-2067, supra note 2; see also Dominic Moulden & Amanda Huron, Creating the Commons, Shelterforce (May 2, 2018), https://shelterforce.org/2018/05/02/creating-the-commons/.

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