Art, water and money

This detail from a 1922 drawing in the Los Angeles Times shows how nesting massive reservoirs in the peaks of the San Gabriel Mountains might check floods and impound water for Southern California. Nothing near the project depicted was realized. The graphic artist wasn’t a seismologist, never mind hydrologist. He drew what was described to him.

Nearly a century has passed but graphics depicting new water projects for Southern California remain almost as antique in their wishfulness. Last week, the Orange County Register produced a beautiful drawing showing how pumps might be placed in the Cadiz Valley in such a way that water supposedly “lost” to evaporation might be captured by sinking wells hundreds of feet below the floor of the Mojave Desert. 

And the winner is . . .

LA City Council voted for roughly 50% turf reduction in spite of unreliable and high maintenance estimates from the LA Department of Recreation and Parks.

High good, low bad: Mead in January 2012

Notes about Colorado River snowpack in January 2012, Lake Mead and public comment on the DEIR being circulated on the Cadiz Valley groundwater mining project.

A day in the Mojave

A trip to the Mojave revealed two exquisite gardens near Joshua Tree, California
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    Emily Green by e-mail at emily.green [at] mac.com
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