“Los Angeles of the Present Has Built for the Los Angeles of the Future”: The “Completion of the Los Angeles Aqueduct” in Municipal Engineering Magazine, April 1913

by Paul R. Spitzzeri

Controversial as it was, especially for those living near its source in the Owens Valley in eastern California, the 234-mile long Los Angeles Aqueduct was an imperative as the metropolis grew by leaps and bounds at the end of the 19th century and into the first decades of the 20th. It was an engineering feat of its era, with water from the Sierra Nevada Mountains region mostly sent in excess of 200 miles and almost entirely with gravity (some lifting by pumps was necessary) to its thirsty destination.

The featured artifact from the Museum’s holdings for this post is an article on its completion in the April 1913 issue of Municipal Engineering, a trade publication issued from Indianapolis, and written by Burt A. Heinly, whose byline simply stated that he was with the Los Angeles Water Department, but who was listed as a clerk in the 1910 federal census and was often referred to as the secretary/executive assistant of “The Chief,” William Mulholland, who was the lead engineer on the Aqueduct project.

The 31-year-old Heinly hailed from Creston, Iowa, southwest of Des Moines, and was a graduate of Knox College in Galesville, Illinois. Shortly afterwards, he migrated to Los Angeles, working first as a journalist with the Herald newspaper and then took up his duties with the water department. In about a dozen years working with Mulholland, Heinly was effective in sharing information about the project with the public, something the notoriously reticent chief engineer foreswore.

For example, Heinly wrote articles on the project for Scientific American, the local California Outlook, the Midwinter Number of the Los Angeles Times in 1912 and 1913, as the Aqueduct was nearly finished and he gave lectures, using three-dimensional stereopticon views displayed through a projector, to the public. A 1910 presentation in South Pasadena included a review by that city’s Record noting that he “is thoroughly familiar with all the details of this work and he gave his hearers a clear idea of the magnitude and importance of that undertaken.”

Heinly left the water department in 1919 to work for a road building firm, but, for most of the Roaring Twenties he was the secretary of a committee of two hundred citizens advising on development of the Port of Los Angeles. Later, he was the chair of the city’s Board of Harbor Commissioners as well as the founder, president and general manager of Highway Communities Corporation, which built a chain of restaurants throughout California along major roadways. He died in March 1959, at age 76, six months after the passing of his wife.

Heinly began his piece by noting that “Southern California is topographically a country of rough contours and steep gradients, or slopes” and not amenable for gathering water runoff, but, he added, “curiously, the very violence of the action induced by these steep slopes on the falling waters tends to supply the medium by which they are retained.” In other words, the granite structure of the mountains allows for the rapid outfall of water into sheds in deltas beneath the ranges and which included “incredible space for the reception of water,” so that, even with moderate rainfall of, say 16 inches per year, there was still “a fairly even and reliable water supply” and this was of high purity due to filtration through minerals with no evaporation.

The problem, naturally, is the frequency and intensity of drought. Heinly noted that from 1897-1898 there were seven years in a row of low precipitation and as surface water from steams diminished, there was a heavy reliance on pumping water from aquifers (this will sound very familiar to us today.) In Los Angeles, historically, water for the city was taken from the Los Angeles River, but those drought years intensified the problem of a lack of supply to keep up with the phenomenal growth that began modestly in the late 1860s when a private water company signed a 30-year contract with the city and expanded dramatically after the great Boom of the 1880s.

While an expedient was found in drilling down into “the subterranean flow of the river” and “the city’s supply was considerably enlarged thereby, for a time,” it became clear quickly that the water department, formed in 1898 after the expiration of the private contract, needed to come up with a drastic solution. This was because, while there was a maximum of 50 million gallons of water available daily in the surface and below ground flow in the river, consumption, even with conservation measures, rose to 30 million by 1905. After considering all local possibilities for increasing supply, it became clear that there had to be outside sources tapped to keep up with phenomenal growth, enhanced by the second great regional boom as the 20th century dawned.

Heinly observed that,

But far to the northward there was a place where water was going to waste—rolling by thousands of inches into a saline lake to be evaporated by the dessicating [sic] winds of the desert and to be lost to humanity forever. To this new source the city of Los Angeles has gone not only for water at present demanded but for the wealth that this new supply will bring in power development and in irrigation along the coastal plain.

It was added that “the obstacles presenting themselves might well have daunted a city of even greater courage,” given the forbidding ranges of mountains, 150 miles of “inhospitable desert,” and other factors. But, the writer continued, “Los Angeles undertook the task of constructing this greater water conduit because she had no other alternative.” As the article was being published, Heinly observed, water “will be sweeping thru the long steel and concrete water course to the impounding reservoir [Van Norman] at the head of the San Fernando Valley” with lines being finished “to carry a copious supply into the municipal distributing system.”

The author commented that the Owens River drainage “affords a sure and copious water supply of which there need never be any fear of human contamination” and that almost 260 million gallons was expected to be acquired on a daily basis. With the ownership of some 25,000 acres of “artesian lands contiguous to the aqueduct and the river,” Los Angeles was insured “against any possible period of long continued drouth by a reserve supply of close to 130 million gallons daily. Heinly reiterated that “in quality the aqueduct supply will have the same sparkling clearness and purity of the water now being served,” but with a mineral content half that of the Los Angeles River.

He noted that an issue of $1.5 million in bonds approved by voters in 1905 was for the acquisition of water rights and advance engineering work—these bonds were sold in New York City and signed by City Treasurer William H. Workman, nephew of Homestead founders William Workman and Nicolasa Urioste and who served in that position from 1901-1907. Shortly after he left office, a June 1907 vote provided for $23 million in bonds for construction of the massive project’s components, starting with a tunnel north of the city that was felt to be “the dominating feature in determining the time of completion for the whole work.”

Heinly noted that much of the challenge was that the course of the aqueduct was almost completely through areas far from any railroad line, but a contract was made with the dominant Southern Pacific to build a steam railroad to allow for easier transportation of material and labor to project sites. Moreover, city personnel built 315 miles of road and 150 miles of telephone lines, as well as a trio of hydroelectric power plants in the Owens Valley and transmission lines “to transmit the energy for the lighting of [work] camps and for driving the excavating machinery.” An $850,000 cement plant was constructed, but this saved money and time over the life of the project, while hundreds of structures for housing of workers and animals, along with machinery, were completed in a year-and-a-half. All told, $4 million was spent in prep work.

In all, the Aqueduct entailed 215 miles of conduit, 10 miles of conduit for power development in San Francisquito Canyon, and five storage reservoirs. From where Owens Valley water entered the system, a system of open canals and ditches conveyed the water into the Haiwee Reservoir, which was seven miles long and up to 1 1/4 miles wide, depending on volume, with a capacity of 20 billion gallons. There was not just clarification and sterilization of the water in the storage, but a regulation of flow for those nearly 260 million gallons per day released southwestward to the Angel City. Past Haiwee, “the conduit is lines and covered with concrete” and “for mile on mile it assumes the form of [a] concrete lined tunnel driven through the solid rock.” When the Aqueduct rose above the desert floor, sometimes 1,200 feet higher, machinery was lifted by aerial trams.

At one juncture, Heinly wrote, a seventy-mile section involved steam shovels excavating a ditch eight feet deep and twelve feet wide, concrete lined, and which, crossing the floor through a 10-foot diameter concrete and steel siphon, ran nearly ten miles along the northern edge of the Sierra Madre (San Gabriel) range to the Fairmont Reservoir. From there, flow was controlled as it went through the 5-mile long and concrete-lined Elizabeth Tunnel which delivered the water to San Francisquito Canyon. The elevation decline from the tunnel to the outlet 25 miles away at Van Norman Reservoir was some 1,450 feet and allowed “for the generation of electrical energy,” though there were 11,500 kilowatts generated further northeast, as well.

Under the subheading of “Rapid Construction,” the writer observed that “construction, despite all delays . . . has been carried on at a rate slightly in excess of 50 miles per year” and almost all of this “done by day labor under the city engineers.” As the article went to press, Heinly proudly noted, “this longest and in many respects most wonderful water works system in the world is practically ready for operation, altho[ugh] some finishing touches remain to be made.” No cost was spared for providing the most up-to-date machinery along with some 4,000 workers in what he termed “an example of perseverance” while the speed of the work was “due in so small part to the ardor and loyalty” of department personnel, including a “friendly rivalry” and “esprit de corps.”

With respect to finances, it was added the construction costs for the San Fernando reservoirs holding the water just below the outlet at The Cascades in Sylmar with these “designed to impound the flow of the aqueduct and to regular the distribution of water as determined by the seasonal needs of Los Angeles and its environs.” Moreover, it was added, “a daily supply in excess of 300,000,000 gallons daily will be made available during the seven months of the dry season when domestic and irrigation requirements are at the maximum.” While Heinly wrote that there would be a “formal celebration of its dedication” over three days in mid-May, the opening day festivities, with some 30,000 persons in attendance, was not held until 5 November.

As for “Distributing the Surplus,” it was recorded that the construction of the distributing system was expected to take up to four further years and cost as much as $6 million. It was explained that the question was not just of sending water to those places demanding it, “but the placing of the water on that area which, now suburban, will be gradually included within the city,” though annexation, “so that the precious fluid shall be gradually diverted from irrigation to the use for which the aqueduct was designed.”

At the outset, it was anticipated that only 10% of the supply, or about 16 million gallons a day, was to come from the aqueduct for distribution, but, of course, “this quantity will be increased gradually as the city continues to expand until that day in the far distant future when the total flow from the long conduit will be required by the city and irrigation from this source will have ceased to exist. That is, this would involve “the economic utilization of the surplus until such time as it is required in the city’s mains” and the outcome was that “Los Angeles of the present has built for the Los Angeles of the future.”

Lastly, with “Power Development,” Heinly concluded that while securing more water for a burgeoning Angel City was the reason for embarking on the project, “the possibilities that lie in the generation of hydro-electric energy, however, from the standpoint of financial gain, make the project, as a water system, of almost secondary importance.” The idea was to have some 120,000 horsepower generated in powerhouses along the course of the aqueduct and another bond issue, of $3.5 million, was approved in 1910 for the first power plant, being constructed at the time of the article’s publication, about 40 miles from the city and expected to generate 37,500 horsepower.

It was expected that the plan would be in operation in July and its transmission lines terminating at a substation with city limits, while “other units will be built as fast as there is need for their output.” Heinly commented that “thus a great dynamic force is made available” for lighting streets, providing electricity and heat for houses and “for the extension of her rapidly growing manufacturing industries.” While the project continued to raise the ire of Owens Valley farmers, ranchers and residents, including sabotage of Aqueduct components as more water was taken during the 1920s and imperiling agriculture and further diversion of water feeding Mono Lake took place from the 1940s onward, recent efforts have kept more water there. Accelerating climate change affecting snow and rain totals will, however, continue to pose immense challenges on available water supply with the Aqueduct along with other regional sources.