on empire, reform, and the LADWP

There it is, take it.
-- W. Mulholland on the first water coursing the Los Angeles Aqueduct

The history of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power(DWP) is one of the great stories of US history, offering great lessons on many things, now, maybe most importantly on reform. The DWP was created over a hundred years ago to bring water to Los Angeles, without taking water from everywhere else, Los Angeles would have remained a dusty little desert byway. It was started by a man with vision, William Mulholland and his first vision was to take the water that drained from the Eastern Sierras into the Owens Valley and pipe it a couple hundred miles south to Los Angeles. There were two great obstacles. The first was the building of the aqueduct. The second was relieving the current Owens Valley water users of their rights, initiating one of the most under reported wars in American history led by Mr. Mulholland and the DWP against the farmers of the Owens Valley. Today, it's always a hoot to head up to the northern Owens valley, over 300 miles from downtown LA, and run into vast fenced areas marked, "No Trespassing! Property of LADWP".

Ten or so years later, the DWP would add electricity to its mix, and grow to become one of the most powerful public agencies in the country. Today, the DWP is the great heart for the vast empire which is Los Angeles. Now, LA takes water not only from the Eastern Sierras, but the Western, and from the Colorado river too. The majority of its electricity comes from a number of coal plants in Nevada, Utah, and Arizona, while the Department itself evolved into one massive byzantine bureaucracy, fighting off all change and crushing all personalities who attempt reform.

The LA Times has two good stories on the DWP and the tragic state of California politics. In the first, two appointees of LA's hapless Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa bicker so much the DWP hires...wait for it....a psychologist, to try an smooth things over. Old Mulholland must be violently spinning in his grave! For almost twenty years, I've watched the DWP chew up and spit out so-called reformers, at one point I even sat in a couple meetings with a self-proclaimed reformer on the top floor in the chairman's office. He left no impact. And just to show who is in charge, in the second article, the DWP bureaucracy announced forget switching to renewables, coal works just fine.

Los Angeles should be leading the world in solar energy production. When you fly into LAX you should pass over an ocean of roofs making energy. But ask anyone in the solar industry and LA is a dead zone, and that's because of the DWP. The DWP not only controls LA's water and electricity, but they also give to the city itself a share of the revenue, over 6% of its budget, thus making the city itself an ally of the status quo. The DWP represents the problem of entrenched interests, and they can be public or private, for any system that is in need of change. In this particular case of a powerful public agency, whose bureaucracy fights off as a threat all attempts at change.

The DWP is just another example of entrenched power and interests that dominate this country at this point. The Department's history represents a natural order of politics, where a vibrant new creates, gradually institutionalizes, and then eventually grows stagnant, to the point vitality is considered a threat. When things reach such a level, there's no hope of changing the institution itself, instead power must be broken-up, it needs to be distributed, so change can take place. There is no middle ground, no splitting the difference when things have reached such a point. Reform is simply those losing power, and those gaining.