Left in the Dust

May 15, 2006
The story of how L.A. diverted the Owens River more than 90 years ago—draining a lake and leaving behind a toxic dust bowl—is one that English professor Piper (Cartographic Fictions
) takes personally. She grew up breathing wind-borne arsenic-laced dust lifted from Owens Lake; her lungs are permanently scarred and her sinuses damaged. It's thus disappointing that this history of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power's corrupt grab for Owens Valley water, and the coverup of the consequent environmental disaster, doesn't pack more of a punch. In a scenario familiar to anyone who saw Polanski's film Chinatown,
Piper lays out facts cogently enough: the capitalist villainy that enriched the young city's white elite nearly a century ago, when work started on the L.A. Aqueduct; the devastating impact of the water's diversion on both Paiute tribes and local farmers; and how the project led to "white flight" from neighborhoods around the Los Angeles River, which was dwindling to a polluted trickle in a trench. Unfortunately, the damning accumulation of accusations, though well documented, is lost in a prose style as opaque as the horrific dust storms the author describes. B&w photos.

July 1, 2006
Owens Lake was drained in the 1920s to provide L.A. with water, and the attendant dirty dealings over water rights and land speculation produced a notorious chapter in the history of the West. But there's more to the story. Once briny Owens Lake went dry, the region's cyclonic winds began whipping up immense clouds of fine white dust. Toxic with arsenic, nickel, selenium, and cadmium, this penetrating grit causes serious lung and autoimmune diseases. Piper grew up breathing the deadly dust, and she and her family are suffering the grave consequences. Accordingly, Piper spent years researching the crimes associated with Owens Lake. The result is a gripping chronicle of epic greed, wanton corruption, overt racism, and unbridled environmental irresponsibility. Piper strips away the camouflage that has long concealed the tragic fate of the Paiute Indians, the killer dust's inundation of a Japanese American internment camp, and the impossibility of meeting the growing water demands of California's desert megalopolis. Global concerns about the increase in windblown dust make Piper's hard-hitting report especially significant.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2006, American Library Association.)