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S5 Ep3: Mulholland's Deadly Dam Disaster | Grab Bag Collab | YouTubeToText
YouTube Transcript: S5 Ep3: Mulholland's Deadly Dam Disaster
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This content explores the complex legacy of William Mulholland, chief engineer of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, focusing on his ambitious water projects that fueled the city's growth but also led to catastrophic disasters and ethical controversies.
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some crimes are so heartbreaking or
shocking they change laws change society
or even earn the label crime of the
century but the stories that made
headlines in decades past aren't
necessarily remembered
today I'm Amber hunt a journalist and
author and in each episode of this show
I'll examine a case that's maybe lesser
known today but was huge when it
[Music]
the phone rang just after midnight in
the home of the director of the Bureau
of Waterworks and supply for the city of
Los Angeles it was March 12th
1928 a rushed voice told the chief that
the St Francis dam was even now
collapsing ferociously into the canyon
below it the 185 ft curved concrete
Behemoth in the San Francis Canyon had
been in service for only 2 years it had
been built to hold hold back 38,000 acre
feet of water for the city's imminent
use the director knew that the water
that had been held back by the dam would
now never reach city tops but would
drown a lot of whatever lived between it
and the concrete Rubble the dam now was
because among other things he knew what
an acre foot of water meant in real
terms hint it's the amount of water that
it would take to cover one acre of land
to a depth of 1 foot I'll do the hard
325,000 he'd been asleep when the world
he had so carefully nurtured came apart
literally at the
seams that Dam had been built explicitly
to hold a Year's worth of water for the
growing Metropolis of Los Angeles which
truth be told was nothing but a parched
desert town that ran headlong into the
Pacific Ocean before he got there a
Barren land that glistened in the
sunshine that banked against mountains
all of it prone to drought and could at
best support very little Beyond cattle
he believed in that Dam and now it was
as he spoke to the man on the phone
sending water something like a million
gallons a second over crushed concrete
and Rubble piles into the canyon below
picking up everything in its path and
shoving it farther toward the city mud
houses bodies oil wells oil animals and
scrub a massive wet thick sludge wall
was being sh shoved forward by the Water
behind it and on to the 10,000 Souls who
probably never heard it
coming located just 54 miles from Los
Angeles the dam had held water that
would later be determined to have shoved
bodies so far as to drop them without
stopping into the cold Pacific Ocean the
St Francis Dam collapse would become the
worst engineering disaster in American
history barely 2 weeks later the
authorities began an inquiry into the
Calamity explains John Wilman author of
flood path it's not a criminal trial it
was a trial to determine who is
responsible and to determine if they
were going to indict anybody it's quite
possible that William molland would have
been indicted for murder William molland
the unqualified hero of the great City
would maybe for the first time ever be
asked to account for his
actions by the time the inquiry opened
he already knew that 227 bodies had been
Unearthed from the Muk in Meer he also
knew that hundreds were still missing
for those wondering the exact number of
dead the official estimate is at least
431 would be forever cloaked in mystery
as many migrant families worked and
lived in temporary shelters along the
aqueduct grateful for the jobs that had
blossomed so regularly in the
agricultural Splendor that the water had
brought the San Fernando Valley so yeah
if this was murder it was murder on a grand
grand
scale at first molland was less than
forthcoming but the weight of the
tragedy hung heavy around his shoulders
something he could not shift to others
this is from PBS if there is any error
in human judgment mhand admitted I was the
the
human I won't try to fasten it on
anybody else
he was not being Noble M Holland knew
that he had designed that Dam without
much if any consultation he knew that he
had even expanded its original design to
carry more load he knew that he had been
called to inspect the site the mourning
of the tragedy to look for himself at
the leaks that had been plugged and the
slight bulging of the giant curving
edifice he had gone he had seen he had
then considered the concerns of those
who who worked on the dam he knew all
Dam leak so he had assured to everyone
that very day that the dam was [Music]
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[Music]
you if you know Los Angeles you know
that one of the most scenic drives that
the city has to offer is M Holland Drive
a 21m road that is known as a tourist
Overlook a Lover's Lane and a road
Racers pair Paradise it's on this drive
that you get a view of the Basin the
valley downtown and the Hollywood sign
and you know the view you've seen it in
dozens of movies the mahalan dam is up
there too in the Hollywood Hills and
holds the Hollywood
Reservoir mahand highway is a 50-m
Scenic road that runs from the Santa
Monica Mountains down to the Pacific
Coast Highway where LA and Ventura
county lines meet moland Memorial
Fountain is a glorious reflecting pool
that is tiled in turquoise and includes
a slice of the original La Aqueduct it's
poised at the busy intersection of Los
Filas Boulevard and Riverside Drive and
there's even a malland middle school a
public school of no particular
Renown this is no mistake William mhand
made this city and that's no
understatement he got to LA in 187 7
after living off his wits and hard work
having never finished grade school he
had left his Dublin home when he was
just 15 working as a seaman in the
British Merchant Navy for a few years
before trying his luck in the United
States from New York he went to Michigan
to work the Great Lakes then to Ohio to
log to California where he was a pretty
unsuccessful Gold Miner only to land a
job in Los Angeles digging ditches on
the ancient and inefficient City water
supply system that issued forth less
than pristine water but he fell in love
with the LA River a trickle of a river
that runs slowly out of what is now
kenoga park and used to spread out to
Marsh and what is now basically San
Pedro that is until it rains that's when
it becomes a torrent that has
historically caused disastrous flooding
it was the primary source of fresh water
for the city early on here's what
molland had to say about the river Via
La public TV station KC and their Los
Angeles history project it was so
attractive to me that it at once became
something about which my whole scheme of
life was
woven in 1877 he was 22 and the
population of the city was around 9,000
molland worked various jobs all in some
sort of Municipal Water distribution
at 30 when his boss dropped dead he was
made superintendent of the Los Angeles
City water company its Legend but true
that he worked his way up by memorizing
the entire Water and Sewer main system
every pipe and drain teaching himself
classical Hydraulic Engineering as he
went he wasn't a guy who forgot where he
came from said geological engineer J
David Rogers he starts out as a ditch
digger I mean you can't start out any
lower you know know than that but that's
what made him such a good field General
understands The Working Man and how to
Marshall their efforts that was what he
lived for his job at least when he
started was to embrace efforts to
conserve water pointing out unnecessary
waste everywhere in the city because
good god there was so little of it and
water that is between 1838 1902 the
average rainfall in the LA Basin was
less than 3 in a year average annual
rainfall now is something like 12 in a
year some years like in 1960 to 61 the
city had less than five and others like
1992 to 93 had almost
24 but such great rain years are
invariably followed by hideous fire
Seasons as the rain encourages
undergrowth in the Hills to flourish
when the dry season returns that
flourishing becomes fuel for fast moving
fires I hardly have to tell you how
devastating that becomes when the Santa
Ana winds rage anyway M Holland was in
charge when the city having survived 3
years of drought began to panic as the
LA River was running dry knowing that he
couldn't create water he and a good
friend former mayor Fred Eaton took a
Buckboard and a lot of whiskey and drove
North out of the city looking for a
sustainable water source which soon
steal Mark Ryner the author of an
astonishingly Great Book Cadillac desert
spoke of the decision and I think M Holland
Holland
suddenly must have changed and he saw
himself as a sort of a builder of a Roman
Roman
Masterwork uh as somebody who kept the
great Hydraulic Engineering tradition
alive I can't tell you what when it
through his head but suddenly he was a
convert having been more of a an
efficiency guy and a conservationist
suddenly he became an Empire Builder
almost overnight I introduced this note
now as we are a true crime podcast and
while I posited mass murder at the
outset I don't wish to overlook what
many serious-minded people see as a
crime of equal if not larger proportion
also committed by William molland with
the help of a lot of serious capitalists
how else most you adequately
characterize how La got its water to
grow and how it continues to get it
today by what Swindle or con did molland
and Eden make the Desert Bloom the world
turn west and why the Rose Bowl and its
glorious parade on every New Year's Day
creates a hankering in the rest of us to
suddenly move there suffice to say that
the two men found just 200 M from home
the Owens River Valley and the seemingly
abundant Owens Lake which had been
formed by Mountain runoff not to be too
political here but this was already
somebody else's home when the pair
happened upon it here pioneering Farmers
had already decided to Plum the water
They too had found and irrigate their
Ino County Land to build families grow
apples water their animals and Thrive as
did the PES the Native Americans who
preceded them they could have simply
asked to share
they chose instead to go to the Inyo
County courthouse and find who owned
what and strategize from there using
everything from maps to stream flows to
mask what can only be called
greed quietly and without much notice
Eaton bought up property and water
rights so too did other in the no
entrepreneurs like Harrison gray Otis
and Harry Chandler owners of the Los
Angeles Times big supporters of the
project when it finally went
public meanwhile no one in the Owens
Valley had an inkling they were selling
their land and water rights to Los
Angeles nor did they realize that
molland had envisioned a giant garden
hose that would shuttle the water away
from their Orchards and straight into
the Sportsman Lodge Bar in the form of
bourbon and water Eaton was such a
greedy Pig he even bought the land where
his friend Bill mahand had told him dams
could be located that would be a good
investment he figured he neglected to
inform bill that he was in effect insider
insider
trading the aqueduck malland imagin
would flow through the San Fernando
Valley also something bought up by a
real estate Syndicate that figured where
there were now cattle there could be
lots and lots of oranges and lemons
tomatoes walnuts limma beans and table
grapes they paid $35 an acre for it in
the 20th centuries first decade Google
tells me that an acre there would now
cost me well over a million dollars
depending on location zoning and
development potential with most prices
falling within the range of $1.5 to5
million per acre due to high demand for
the land in this densely populated area
I should point out here that molland did
not invest personally in the land
Swindle if you want to call it that he
was only interested in the water and how
he was going to deliver it like a
Milkman to La's doorstep every day for
decades to come to do so of course those
60,000 Acres of irrigated Farmland in
the Owens Valley were going to be
snapped up soon to be thirsty and before
long useless
again on July 25th 1905 molland went
public announcing he'd been to the
desert and read a sermon in the sand
water that precious lifeblood is just a
little more than 200 miles away he
explained to a worried populace if
voters would only agree to fund it he
had this idea of building an aquadec
from here to there a 12-ft conduit of
water water that would be driven to Los
Angeles by gravity alone to where it
could be best used he rallied the
Chamber of Commerce and found solid
support in Sacramento for his plan even
president Theodore Roosevelt signed on
creating the in National Forest creating
as Mark Ryner explained in his book
Cadillac desert the first national
forest that had no trees if you didn't
count the apple orchards which without
water would soon enough leave the forest
leafless campaigning for the bond issue
to pass the LA Times exuded confidence
in the plan no wonder that the
250,000 residents of the city in the
midst of a drought voted 10 to one for
the $24.5 million bond to fund the
building of the Monstrous pipeline
that's about $ 800 million today give or
take a few tens of millions the building
it today would be far more than that
figure construction began in 1909 the
joke being that all the water
Department's workmen had to do was
follow the whiskey bottles thrown out of
the Buckboard a few years earlier when
the chief in eeden had taken a month to
go water hunting M Holland's
granddaughter Catherine who spoke of him
in later years tried hard to defend his
reputation the most valuable thing my
grandfather had in the building of the
aqueduct and the whole planning of the
water system was his ability to get
along with other people people really
liked him I mean he really identified
with the Working Man the working
stiff the Epic engineering feat included
building power generators and cement
factories setting up camps for the
workers channeling through rocks and
over mountains shipping in german-built
pipes large enough for trains to run
through medical facilities food service
and constant Construction in conditions
that ranged from 0 degrees in winter to
130 in summer William molland personally
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that follows [Music]
[Music]
the LA Aqueduct took 5 years to complete
less than the chief had estimated an
under budget by half
million on November 5th 1913 the
aqueducts first day online in the San
Fernando Valley thousands showed up with
tin cups to drink the stuff that would
save them from being a dinky two bit
Backwater P.S you can still see that
spot now referred to as the Cascades a
California historical marker at the
intersection of Foothill Boulevard and
Balboa Boulevard just north and west of
the city of San
Fernando okay so when the floodgates
opened M Holland's speech basically went
like this there it is take it a bit
antimima sure but he was tired and had
to finish up there to get to the
hospital to be with his wife who was
having cancer surgery that day the
58-year-old molland had become a
powerful man in a town that was
redefining power in America angelinos
even wanted him to be mayor something he
not so politely declined he was easily
the best paid civil servant in
California but he wasn't getting in
ordinant Rich doing his job that job
included providing the city with
hydroelectricity by way of the power
plants he directed along the aqueduct so
he was equally responsible for the clean
energy fueling the ever burgeoning film
industry the expansion of ship and
aircraft manufacturing and the increased
demand for oil and gas production oh and
for copious amounts of air conditioning
when it was first made available for
home use in the late
20s Maria E Montoya an associate
professor of history and American
studies at the University of Michigan
has spent a lot of time studying the
Latino experience in Southern California
she told PBS it's very easy to picture
Mulholland as
corrupt but he wasn't doing this because
he was getting paid off to do it or he
was making money off of
it I think for him it's really about his
own vision and his power and his ability
to remake nature I think that's what's
driving him Katherine mollen's
granddaughter agreed but added that my
grandfather had too much power in the
sense that it had been given to him
people wanted him to have it and that's
a very beguiling position to be in to
have people give you power very hard to
say no to [Music]
[Music]
that the rry that accompanied the 1913
opening of the floodgates was not
appreciated by those who felt Owens
Valley had been at best misled and at
worst robbed raped and left for dead La
was the fastest growing city in the
world approaching a population of 1
million this of course meant more need
for water and serve to step up the
city's land buying spree in the Owens
Valley the Great Depression came early
in that part of California that included
cities like Bishop Big Pine Lone Pine
and Independence Farms dried up and
Banks were not taking chances to offer
Farmers a reprieve people moved away
schools and churches were emptying out a
few Farmers figured they could reason
with the folks from the big city let us
just say they were wrong used to having
enough water and now fearing a coming
in by May of 1924 near the town of Lone
Pine a bunch of the Fed Up changed taxs
they dynamited a length of the aqueduct
at the Alabama Dam employing 5 100 lb of
dynamite they sent a clear signal South
Bishop resident Cynthia Irwin is still
pretty proud of that talk about
Community involvement I know that my
grandfather was there I have spoken
recently with my mother's cousin and she
said that she remembers that it was a
party that her mother got her up early
and got her dressed up and she was only
four so there was a
I mean that was a great step and those
people didn't move from the Alabama
Gates they didn't
move that took a lot of Courage it
did local papers back up Irwin's account
including that some women cooked for the
dynamiters While others cared for the
children on site Tom Mick an early
Western film star was making a movie
nearby and sent musicians to entertain
the bombers a bunch of local teenage
girls formed an orchestra ra to join
them when the girls weren't there the
men listened to enrio Caruso on
photographs and their wives Sayang
Onward Christian Soldiers hopefully not
at the same
time anyway The Irate law Breakers have
been variously reported as numbering 40
50 and 100 doesn't matter they stopped
temporarily the news went Nationwide
though hardly with the Vigor that those
locally felt Mulholland fumed this was
terrorism he sent a whole raft of men
North to uncover the plot finger the
evildoers and press charges of vandalism
but nobody in that Valley talked it was
them against the world moholland even
received death threats in the mail
forced arbitration followed and what
must have been an odd standoff pitting
those who had unlawfully behaved by
blowing up the aqueduct against the city
of La which had rather shiftily
absconded with her water where was the
moral High Ground did anyone have legal
feat to stand on while the lawyers
exchanged memos and filed Court briefs
representatives from Los Angeles bought another
another
2,140 Acres of omen Valley land and
successfully got control of 90% of the
water rights under dispute for 7 years
the negotiations slogged on the aqueduct
was dynamited 11 times in the interim La
managed to slake its thirst with the
water after it repaired the breaches and
dipped into the wet stuff it had stashed
in reservoirs nobody was jailed M
Holland sure he was right in the regard
hired 600 armed guards to keep the
aqueduct safe the Big Pine Herald at one
point reported that quote the defendants
in this case the water owners and the
users of this section are the men who
helped build the West end quote yes and
no as the PBS documentary made clear
those so-called good guys who had plowed
the valley into Lush Farmland were the
same people who had used violence and
deceit to dispossess the PES of the land
they had lived on for maybe centuries
turn about being fair play hard to say
it makes it hard to pinpoint the crime
of the century here but looks like we
have a slew of
candidates for now I'm going to stick
with M Holland who despite his finer
qualities showed few qualms in executing
his grand scheme greater good is a valid
argument I guess but like the saying
goes mother nature always has the final
California's little Civil War not
withstanding we are back to where I
started in 1928 and the failure of the
dam which may have been a real crime of
negligence it is no stretch to extend
that negligent homicide and to what
exactly caused what happened in San
francisquito Canyon on that horrible
night for those who know Southern
California the canyon is about 40 m
north and west of downtown LA and about
10 mil north of the city of Santa
Clarita today instead of a dam you'll
find a California historical marker
indicating that this is the St Francis
dam disaster site the dam was something
called a gravity Dam that defines
Loosely how it was built the way it was
curved and the base on which it stood it
was designed to hold back Water by using
only the weight of the materials and its
resistance against the
foundation M Holland was very familiar
with the terain at the site he did not
skip the important step of determining
the rock composition of both sides of
the canyon walls and found the two sides
were indeed of different makeup he then
did exploratory Drilling and was
satisfied that this was a good place for
a dam I mean it's not like the the man
just threw a dam up there any which way
he did the work he did the math later
his decisions about appropriateness of
the land would be questioned as some
geologists felt that the dam may have
been built on the inactive San Franciso
fault line you know a place where the
Earth opens up when a quake shakes the
out of it or more scientifically
where rigid tectonic plates within the
Earth's crust move from time to time to
accommodate the movement of magma
farther below I think I got that right
but my point is fault line bad anyway he
designed this Dam as a twin to his first
concrete Dam the malland Dam located
closer to town in the Hollywood Hills
knowing that La was outpacing its own
growth estimates and that he had already
drained Owen's Lake dry sometime in 1924
the chief decided to make the St Francis
Dam 10 ft taller without increasing the
size of its base Cas this he added after
he'd gotten a thumbs up from his bosses
on the design though he did add a wing
on the western side of the dam to
increase the Dam's capacity to
compensate for the height that also
meant he had added 8,000 acre feet of
water to the load it would have to
contain I won't make you do the math
that's 2.6 billion more gallons of water
leaks showed up in April 1927 when the
water was allowed to accumulate behind
the dam it leaked where the fault line
would have intersected with the wing
Edition uh-oh and yet the records show
that the seepage through 1927 had not been
been
extraordinary then came early 1928 when
new cracks appeared and those working on
SES spent a lot of time plugging
leaks a week before the dam failed a
trusted employees saw that new leaks had
occurred and they were not leaking clean
water but muddy water
this meant that the foundation was
eroding and water may be undermining the concrete
concrete
structure that's when molland and
another water department engineer
inspected it and decided that because an
access road was being built alongside
the dam that was what was muddying the
water the foundation they said was in
the clear a week later they were called
out for the last time and gave the dam
their seal of approval Catherine Holland
explained that she loved her grandfather
immensely but grandfather molland was
not a sentimentalist he was a very
hardheaded realistic person and given
the conditions of his childhood and and
upbringing he not hard to understand
that his loyalty to the city and to the
water department were unswerving I think
one in in 1860 textile manufacturer pton
Mills Factory in Lawrence Massachusetts
suddenly lost all of its structural
Integrity hundreds of its workers were
caught under the weight of the building
as many as 145 were killed and 166 more
were critically injured in trying to
locate survivors someone accidentally
started a fire by way of a handheld lamp
likely killing more who might have been
rescued what caused the Calamity an
inquiry revealed that too much weight on
the building's floors substandard
construction improperly mortared walls
and cheap iron used in The Columns that
held up the building worked together to
force the implosion nobody was charged
with a crime in more modern times in
June 1981 two overhead walkways that
hung from the Hyatt Regency hotel lobby
in Kansas City Missouri were overloaded
with partygoers and collapsed killing
114 and injuring 216 more those who had
constructed the hotel a few years
earlier had hurried to make deadlines
skirting necessary oversight of the
Skywalk design and
construction the engineering company
responsible for the structures failure
was convicted of gross negligence and
professional misconduct the company's
president took full responsibility he
was not convicted for causing 114 deaths
which from reminds me that the courts of
this country are littered with product
liability cases where people are injured
even killed because products explode or
malfunction examples range from the
small and incidental to the 2002 Earth
shattering 28 billion dollars in
punitive damages awarded to middle-age
Betty bollock Who contracted lung cancer
and argued successfully in a case
against Philip Morris that the company
had failed to warn her of the risks of
smoking public policy in these kinds of
cases changed dramatically though still
no one went to jail until finally
someone did in 2014 an architect who
built his own home in the Hollywood
Hills was sentenced to a year in prison
because he drew up plans for and oversaw
the interior installation of a fireplace
that was meant for outdoor use when his
house caught fire a Los Angeles
firefighter died when the roof collapsed
the homeowner knowingly violated the
rules he lied to house inspectors and
then to investigators during their
inquiry into the cause of the fire
business insurance magazine wrote that
the case was a wakeup call for
professional liability for those who
build things which makes me wonder what
California would do with William Mulholland
Mulholland [Music]
today the utter collapse of the St
Francis dam is considered the country's
worst man-made disaster of the 20th
century it killed more than those who
perished in 1906 when an earthquake
nearly threw San Francisco into the bay
before the fire that followed almost
burned it down along with the dam also
gone was M Holland's reputation and his
great lifelong belief in himself he had
built so much the St Francis was his
19th Dam but it had undone [Music]
[Music]
him the coroner's jury the one in which
he had laid blame on himself agreed with
him summing up that he was responsible
for the deaths of so many and as well as
$20 million in property damage yes the
report admitted the foundation of the
dam had been flawed from a geological
point of view but someone should have
known own that it was also noted that
while some traces of dynamite had been
found in the reubel that was not the
cause of the collapse it also wasn't an
area of investigation that the city
pursued I mean to what end really except
to further in sense the locals who were
already grieving their
dead the report in history would blame
MH Holland's mantle of absolute power in
the water department no dam in the
United States would ever be built with
so little scrutiny in fact hooverdam
which was under consideration at the
time of the collapse would be designed
by a total of 200 Engineers not just the
one and slowed considerably by the
review process it under went
construction on it began just 3 years
after the St Francis
collapse no indictment was forthcoming
for the chief the families of those who
died Downstream from the dam were paid
$5,000 each by the
city molland went home as his
granddaughter reported to quickly retire
he then endured the rest of his life she
family in the spring of 1929 the city
bulldozed and carried away the remains
left at the dam site to erase the memory
of the event but Los Angeles remained as
ever thirsty all those new people and
their Gardens and golf courses all that
vegetation that had been brought from
somewhere else imp planted and watered
enough to thrive geez even the trademark
palm trees along Beverly Hills Boulevard
were chucked in as were the bright pink
Bugan via that bloom year round on the
ramps to the five and 1934 a year before
M Holland's death at 80 some plans he'
laid out to redirect more water the
city's way were given a fresh look
William witell the chairman of the board
of the Metropolitan water district of
Southern California had sounded the
scarcity alarm unless we take immediate
steps to bring in water from an outside
Source the people of Southern California
will be up against a serious water
shortage but we are fortunate in having
within our reach a water source capable
of supplying our needs this source is
the Colorado
River Work began again using M Holland's
map to blast a conduit to the Arizona
State Line where the Arizona State
militia stood waiting to stop them I
won't belabor this but the lawsuit that
followed proved to be the longest
running court case in American history
lasting 30 years guess who
won the Colorado River Aqueduct now
brings water across the Mojave Desert
for the benefit of those who live in
Southern California
when the Chief died in his sleep of a
stroke in July 1935 he was laid to view
in the rotunda at City Hall the Los
Angeles Times reported that people from
all walks of life showed up in throngs
to pay their respects and this from an
inside page on the day of his funeral
quote the flow of water in the Owens
River Aqueduct which malland built was
stopped for a moment as it came from the
intake in the Omens Valley along another
great Aqueduct line now building 10,000
men working on the Colorado Aqueduct
paused with reverence end
quote the city school district declared
a week in October 1939 as William
molland week so that teachers could
spend time teaching little angelinos
about his legacy and Los Angeles got
bigger and stayed
thirsty throughout the midcentury La
topped Mono Lake a lake in Eastern
California about
Midstate extending the existing Aqueduct
North the desert Lakes three ancient
sources of fresh water Rush Creek lining
Creek and mil Creek were diverted away
from mono and on to La this proved ugly
as well monol lake is a saine ecosystem
that would only get progressively more
so when freshwater was withheld from it
this meant 2 million annual migratory
birds were dying and alkal dust storms
swept the area in 1964 there were even
some plans floated that would see the
aqueduct extend to tap the Colombia
River which I should note actually
starts in Canada the idea was to
irrigate Nevada along the way maybe
throw some water to Arizona and Texas
that was scrapped but not before it got
a good airing in late 1963 the aqueducts
Baldwin Hills Dam burst built after the
second world war it only took five lives
the Los Angeles city police helicopter
is here the Los Angeles City Fire
Department helicopter is here the police
are on the ground with motorcycles and
Automobiles trying to effectively
activate people from here so there can't
possibly be any more loss of life than
there is property no telling how much
property has already been
lost in
1966 the Feather River a tributary of
the Sacramento River was added to the
garden hose flowing South
in 1980 good sense and good manners
returned deals were struck Los Angeles
even had to give back some water to the
people of owens's Valley the movie
Chinatown the 1974 Roman palansky
Masterpiece that saw Jack Nicholson get
his nose sliced was a Neo Noir fiction
which had the malland water grab as
backstory Robert Town won an Oscar for
the screenplay he had his own take on M
Holland and the man's ultimate place in
Los Angeles history some crimes are so so
so
monstrous they can't figure out how to
punish them so they actually sort of
reward them the mone's name is on the
scenic route of the city the criminals
names are on plaques as City Founders
rather than in jail where they
belonged Los Angeles gets its water now
as I said from the Colorado River
Aqueduct but also from the ens River the
Mono Lake Basin the Feather River and
the reservoirs of of snow melt in the Sierra
Sierra
Nevadas the city is recycling water
capturing storm water and has in recent
years begun to return the LA River to
its natural state after Decades of being
nothing more than a cemented drainage
ditch children can play in it fish even
swim in it as for the aqueduct the
original pipeline it still delivers a
billion gallons of water a day to the
city of 3.8 million and to much of the
metro area that includes 12.5 million
people because the people well they have
coming to research this case journalist
Amy Wilson read and highly recommends
Mark risner's Cadillac desert a book she
read when she first got to Southern
California in 1995 she also read The
Mirage Factory by Gary Christ and a wide
array of stories from the Los Angeles
Times both archival and present day she
watched a slew of documentaries as
indicated in the text and waxed
[Music]
Chinatown Crimes of the centuries is
available early and adree through grabag
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citations this show was researched and
written by me Amber hunt and produced by
Amanda Rossman and Henry Lavoy original
music is by Bruce hunt Andrew Higley and
occasionally by my son hunt fan Ben
scoten other music comes from sound
stripe and epidemic sound if you like
the show help us out by raing and
reviewing us on an Apple podcast for
more information or to recommend a case
go to centuries pod.com [Music]
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