Public Interest, Indigenous Rights, and the Los Angeles Aqueduct

Abstract

This dissertation offers a critical reassessment of the emblematic water conflict over the Los Angeles Aqueduct, one of the first large rural-to-urban water transfers in the American West. Drawing on three years of in-depth archival, ethnographic, and collaborative research, it examines how public, private, and tribal interests have been weighed in decision-making about land and water allocation over time. The first part of the dissertation addresses gaps in the history of the water conflict, which has long been framed as a clash between the farmers of Owens Valley and the City of Los Angeles, or between private and public interests. However, archival research revealed that federal and city policies on behalf of the public interest in water supply for Los Angeles also systematically restricted Indigenous land and water claims, despite federal obligations to protect tribal interests. Weaving together insights from critical legal studies, settler colonial studies, and historical political ecology, the research sheds light on the intersections of natural resource policy and federal Indian policy and their implications for water justice in the American West. The second part of the dissertation extends the history of the water conflict into the current day, as it has been transformed by environmental laws that recognize a public interest in environmental protection to be weighed alongside the public interest in urban water supply. Yet, while water exports have been curtailed in response to environmental concerns, tribal water rights remain disputed and Indigenous perspectives remain largely sidelined in water management debates. As water wars have become science wars in the wake of environmental battles, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power has assumed the mantle of an ‘environmental corporate citizen’ and reframed its operations in environmental terms. This has, in turn, reconfigured relationships among environmental, ranching, and Indigenous actors within the Eastern Sierra, as well as between them and Los Angeles residents, as diverse coalitions have found common ground among concerns about ecosystem health, rural livelihoods, and Indigenous stewardship. Observation of this process highlights the dynamic and at times tenuous nature of what have been called “unlikely alliances,” but also the transformative potential of growing movements for water justice. As rapid urbanization and climate change pressures drive more cities to look to distant rural areas for water supply, this study offers important insights into the shifting politics of water transfers and the diversity of actors and interests involved.