LAUREL CANYON—Laurel Canyon in the middle of a water war?  Our Laurel Canyon?  Seems hardly possible. But there is an undeniable trail of natural water that has been snatched from us, which is now graciously being sold back to us. I’ll shut up when they give me back my water.

Early Los Angeles history has a Tongva tribe living at the base of Laurel Canyon and Hollywood Boulevards.  Archeologists know that these villages were always settled near water sources. I interviewed Jessica Hall, Restoration Design Group, LLC, as she is an expert on revitalizing local streams.  In fact she’s mapped Laurel Canyon’s historical streams and riverbeds. I was shocked by the number of streams—intermittent, ephemeral and permanent—that exist in the area.  There are dozens over Lookout Mountain, which explains why the street is always weeping, even if the city can’t figure this out.  There are dozens more flowing through Mt. Olympus. Like fingers leading down the hillsides.

So who snatched our water?  In the 1890s there were lemon groves at the foot of Laurel Canyon.  At first farmers used windmills to bring water up from the wells on the alluvial plain at the base of the canyon.  Then they put in gasoline driven wells, which drew water from deeper underground.  One of my earlier stories reported on the original grading of Laurel Cañon Boulevard from a rutted water ruined mule track to a roadway.  The engineers put in “culverts at the mouth of every barranca or ravine to carry off water and prevent washouts.”  That’s a 1907 report!  I then scared up a Court Opinion and Order Dated 1925.  At public hearings the Laurel Canyon Land Company, which operated a local water supply system for the hills, was seeking a rate increase.  Apparently the water company got its water from “wells and tunnels situated in various parts of Laurel Canyon, and is pumped directly into the distribution mains, the excess being stored in tanks.”   The water company’s objective was to encourage development in Laurel Canyon, but by 1925 it seems that the water supply could no longer meet the development demands.  So Laurel Canyon started drinking from the “City’s water trough.”

I interviewed Tommy from the Laurel Canyon Country Store.  He told me that his foundation, the one-time home of Cass Elliot, is made of river rocks. Then as I started to look I saw that several retaining walls along Lookout and Kirkwood were also made of river rock.  I had assumed that this stuff was all trucked in by some decorator until I met Mr. Ehling on Woodrow Wilson who showed me that his entire retaining wall,  20 feet high,  was built by him from river rock he’d picked up on his property.  His house is on the top of a hill for Pete’s Sake. Call me stupid, but I’d always thought of rivers as at the bottom of hills.  Duh—Yosemite Falls—from the top.  Oops it’s the city slicker in me again. Ya gotta watch those assumptions.

So the city, in all its brilliant urban planning installed sewers and drains all over the hills to capture our natural water.  They run it into the Santa Monica Bay; no thought of putting it in an aquifer and recycling for us—too practical.  Now they drain it off the hills and sell Colorado River water back to us.

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