Nancy Masters has lived in Owens Valley for most of her life. Her father, Keith Bright, acting as an Inyo County Board of Supervisor, was one of the negotiators and signators for the 1991 Inyo-LA Long-Term Water Agreement (LTWA). As a citizen activist and historical preservationist, Masters exemplifies how local citizen engagement can help to conserve and protect the historic memory of Owens Valley’s architectural landscape.
When the City of Los Angeles purchased Owens Valley land and water rights for its aqueduct project during the earlier part of the twentieth century, it additionally acquired farms, ranches, housing, and many of the valley’s commercial properties in the towns of Cartago, Olancha, Lone Pine, Independence, Big Pine, and Bishop. This amassment of local real estate by the city led to a significant reduction in much-needed tax revenue for Inyo County. The City of Los Angeles began to divest of some of these properties beginning in the 1930s, initially giving preference to local residents and business owners in a “spirit of goodwill and cooperation,” but later reneged and sold properties to the highest bidder during sealed auctions. When Owens Valley residents and business owners protested the policy, LADWP simply raised their rents.[1]
Some legislation was eventually passed that required the City of Los Angeles to give preference to the existing leaseholders (the majority of which were local) as well as provide them the first option to buy when the property was put up for sale. The law also allowed some rent control provisions. The City of Los Angeles responded by stopping all real estate sales in the valley in 1945. Sales resumed, if only sporadically, during the 1960s and 1970s and occur today on a sporadic basis. The current five-year lease agreements for city-owned commercial buildings and residential properties effectively discourage most of its lessees from making any substantial or lasting improvements to leased properties. Land for commercial development continues to be hard to come by; Bishop’s Kmart is the only big-box chain in the Owens Valley beside the Vons supermarket, which took eleven years of negotiations with the department before the grocery store could be built.
It is fair to assume that the LADWP’s property management policies are responsible for the depressed economy and blight witnessed throughout Owens Valley towns. Still, many residents, even those who critique the City of Los Angeles, acknowledge how the initial construction of the aqueduct along with LADWP’s ongoing watershed management policies has kept the valley free of sprawl and unbridled development—which nearly everyone living here values. Others, however, insist that Owens Valley is little more than a “water colony” and argue that as overseer, the property management policies of the LADWP limit economic opportunity necessary for small, independently-owned businesses to thrive. Benett Kessler, of Sierra Wave News Media, repeatedly stated that LADWP has an active policy of opposing healthy, sustainable growth throughout the valley to protect their water supply investment. Indeed, although Owens Valley towns may appear quaint and picturesque while driving through them but on closer inspection the shabbiness of neglect becomes apparent. Many of the properties owned by the City of Los Angeles are minimally maintained and often fall into disrepair or are boarded up—only later to be demolished. Masters has called LADWP’s property management policies a “pattern of the systematic destruction of the Owens Valley.”[2]
LADWP’s culture of indifference was evident April 26th, 2012, when a historic barbershop in Independence was quietly demolished during early morning hours. The building had been documented and recorded by Inyo County as a prized historic structure, protected under provisions of the LTWA. Inyo County building officials stated that LADWP had applied for a demolition permit but it had not been approved prior to the building being torn down.
Masters speculates that the early morning demolition date and time were selected by the LADWP to avoid any interaction with local citizens who were opposed to the demolition. Masters commented in an article published on Sierra Wave News that “the Independence Civic Club had made a proposal with volunteers and money to restore the building [but] DWP never got back to us.”[3]
The Civic Club members were in the process of mapping historic buildings in Independence, including the barbershop, at the time of the building’s destruction. An LADWP representative later responded to a Sierra Wave News inquiry stating that an outside consultant determined that the building was structurally unsafe and not historic, hence the demolition. Masters and other Civic Club members continue to fight the erasure of Independence’s architectural heritage and cultural memory.
Track Credits
Music: Black Twig Pickers and Steve Gunn, “Old Strange” (Creative Commons license).
FOOTNOTES (click to open/close)
[1] William Kahrl, Water and Power: The Conflict Over Los Angeles Water Supply in the Owens Valley (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), 380.
[2] Benett Kessler, “Little Shop of Sadness,” Sierra Wave Media, April 26, 2012.
[3] Kessler, “Little Shop of Sadness.”