Owens Lake Dust Mitigation Team

[Started created this directory of the consultants and contractors being utilized by the LADWP while working on my thesis – but didn’t get very far – still it’s worth sharing. I’d be interested to learn about more of the contractors, consultants, and researchers out there… #mammothbook]

[note, there isn’t any logic to the sequence of the list, so don’t even try to figure it out]

City of Los Angeles Dept. of Water and Power
Brian Tillemans

Great Basin Unified Air Pollution Control District
Ted Schade, Projects Manager

Inyo County Water Department
Contact_Person: Chris Howard
Contact_Position: GIS Specialist/System Administrator
Address: 163 May St.
City: Bishop
State_or_Province: CA
Postal_Code: 93514
Contact_Voice_Telephone: 760-872-1168
Hours_of_Service: 9:00 AM – 5:00P

Preliminary Research into dust control techniques:
Gill, T.E., Cahill, T.A., Copeland, S.A., and White, B.R., 2003. Sand fences for control of wind erosion and dust emission at Owens Lake, CA: 1. Full-scale testing, field deployment, and evaluation of effectiveness. Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Wind Engineering, Lubbock, TX, June 2003, vol. 2, pp. 2773- 2780.
Cahill, T.A., Gill, T.E., Reid, J.S., Gearhart, E.A., and Gillette, D.A., 1996. Saltating particles, playa crusts and dust aerosols at Owens (dry) Lake, California. Earth Surface Processes and Landforms 21: 621- 639.
Gill, T.E. and Cahill, T.A., 1992. Drying saline lake beds: a regionally-significant PM10 source. In: Chow, J.C., and Ono, D.M., eds., PM10 Standards And Nontraditional Particulate Source Controls. Air & Waste Management Association Transactions Series 22: 440-454.

Reconstructing the Void – the lecture

As part of the #Mammothbooks reading of The Infrastructural City, I am pleased to share the reading of my chapter in my Intro to Environmental Design class at the University of Minnesota on April 27th.

The lecture audio file is ~30 minutes and has not been edited.

w15-1 owens lake v4 of the lecture’s slides – all images are credited or by Barry Lehrman.



Owens Lake & LA Aqueduct Bibliography

To enhance the collective reading of The Infrastructural City organized by Mammoth, here are the highlights of the bibliographic sources from my research into Owens Lake for ‘Reconstructing the Void: Owens Lake’ and my thesis project (circa 2005). Drop me a note if you need help locating any of these sources or find new items that need to be added. #mammothbook

Owens Valley

Bishop Visitors Center; Welcome to Bishop 2003 Press Kit. Bishop California

Center for Land Use Interpretation, ‘California’s Owens Valley’, The Lay of the Land, Summer 2004

Department of Defense; Checklist of Birds, Edwards Air Force Base, California. Department of Defense. Jamestown, ND: Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center Online. (Version 23JUN00)

Ewan, Rebecca Fish; A Land Between – Owens Valley, California. Baltimore, John Hopkins University Press, 2000.

Hall, Clarence A., et al- editors; The History of Water: Eastern Sierra Nevada, Owens Valley, White-Inyo Mountains. White Mountain Research Station Symposium, Volume 4. Los Angeles: University of California, 1992.

Hoffman, Abraham; Vision Or Villainy: Origins Of The Owens Valley-Los Angeles Water Controversy. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1981.

James, Greg, Dennis Williams, et al; Green Book for the Long-term Management Plan for the Owens Valley and Inyo County. Bishop, CA: June 1990.

Gary Libecap ‘Chinatown: Transaction Costs in Water Rights Exchanges The Owens Valley Transfer to Los Angeles’, (NSF Grant 0317375). [This paper explodes the myth that Los Angeles ‘stole’ the water from the Owens Valley, and why the farmers were eager to sell.

Olson, Wilma R; Olancha Remembered. Sacramento, CA: W.R. Olson 1997

Putnam, J. & G. Smith, editors; Deepest Valley: A Guide to Owens Valley, Its Roadside and Mountain Trails– 2nd Edition. Palo Alto: Genny Smith Books/Live Oak Press, 1995.

Sharp, Robert & Allen Glazner; Geology Underfoot in Death Valley and Owens Valley. Missoula Montana: Mountain Press Publishing 1997.
Timmer, Kerri L.; Troubled Water of the Sierra, Sierra Nevada Alliance

Varnelis, Kazys; Points of Interest in the Owens River Valley. Culver City, CA: Center for Land Use Interpretation, 2004.

Wood, R. Coke; The Owens Valley and the Los Angeles Water Controversy – Owens Valley as I Knew It. Stockton CA: University of the Pacific, 1973.

Writing ‘Infrastructure of the Void’

As part of my engagement with the collective reading of The Infrastructural City organized by Mammoth, I wanted to share the process and backstory about my chapter in the book – ‘Reconstructing the Void: Owens Lake’. #mammothbook

The chapter title

‘Until Los Angeles’ was my working title of the drafts from October 2006 to May 2007 . ‘Infrastructure of the Void’ was the second working title and the one I’m still the most fond of. ‘Reconstructing the Void: Owens Lake’ was coined by Kazys Varnelis in the 20070820 Owens Draft. But the chapter has a longer history worth sharing.

The Back Story

The chapter emerged from the research component from my MLA/MArch thesis, the design of an alternate dust mitigation system to restore Owens Lake and create a hybrid landscape for tourism and habitat. As a resident of LA for several years before grad school, I first visited the Owens Valley on a spur of the moment road trip on Memorial Day weekend in 1998. I looked at a map of California and pointed my car into the unknown of the Eastern slopes of the Sierra Nevadas and have been haunted by Owens Valley ever since.

Then in summer of 2004, with the intent and dream of return to California, I initially choose the Los Angeles Aqueduct as my thesis topic. Through the arduous thesis proposal/approval process, the Owens Lake Playa became my focus and site.

From the Complete Report on Construction of the Los Angeles Aqueduct, 1916.

reading ‘the infrastructural city’ proposal

Dust control 'bubblers' on Owens Lake

Mammoth is organizing a webwide book club blogging even focused on on The Infrastructural City starting at the end of April. I will certainly join in fun for my chapter on Owens Lake. Maybe even post some of the drafts and parts that didn’t make the cut into the book.

For each of the twelve chapters, mammoth will post a piece summarizing and commenting on that chapter as a conversation starter, but we hope that a rich discussion will spiral out from that central hub, through comments, through other participating blogs (currently including dpr-barcelona, faslanyc, free association design, Nam Henderson, Andrew and Peter of the polis blog, and quiet babylon – we’ll provide links to posts at other blogs discussing each chapter as they’re posted), and into other corners of the internet (twitter, etc.). To that end, participation in this discussion — this “book club” — is open to any and all interested readers. In order to join us, all you need is a copy of The Infrastructural City, a bit of time to read along, and an interest in discussing landscape, architecture, and infrastructure.

If you’re using twitter, you can follow the conversation, announcements, and so on using the hashtag #mammothbook; you may also care to join or follow the “twub” which the folks at dpr-barcelona have been kind enough to set up for the group, and which will serve as an archive for all #mammothbook tweets.

We won’t start discussing the first chapter, “Owens Lake”, until Monday, April 26th, in order to give all interested persons an opportunity to pick up the book and start reading (and writing, if you’re so inclined) before the discussion gets started. After that, we’ll be discussing one chapter a week, taking a break on every fourth week. In the meantime, we’d love to hear from everyone who is interested in participating, in the comments of this post. If you’d like to participate, be sure to leave your email address — we’ll be sending out reminder emails a little bit in advance of each week’s discussion.

Schedule
April 26th Owens Lake <—– this is my chapter!

May 3rd Los Angeles River Watershed + The River (images)
May 10th Oil
May 17th (off)
May 24th Gravel
May 31st Traffic + The Street (images)

June 7th Telecommunications
June 14th (off)
June 21st Landscape
June 28th Mobile Phones

July 5th Property
July 12th (off)
July 19th Distribution + The Trench (images)

August 2nd Props
August 9th Introduction

…[R]ead reviews of The Infrastructural City at Places Journal, Archidose, and We Make Money Not Art.