Nature

The dispute between Los Angeles and the Owens valley which is located in California over who has the rights for water that is in Sierra Nevada has come to be described as the California water wars. The location of Los Angeles being in a semi arid it always needed the water which runoff to the Owens valley thus creating the conflict. (Laura, 2010)

The war for water began in 1898 as soon as Frederick Eaton was voted as the mayor of Los Angeles and chose William Mulholland one of his closest friends as the senior administrator of Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP). (Laura, 2010)

Eaton along with Mulholland had a vision of making Los Angeles a far bigger city than the Los Angeles of previous centuries. The development and growth of Los Angeles was limited by lack of a good water supply. Thus Eaton and Mulholland discovered that Owens Valley had a vast quantity of overflow originating from the Sierra Nevada, furthermore a well built supply canal possibly would carry the Owens water to Los Angeles. A large amount of the water rights were obtained using deception, with acquisitions dividing water corporations as well as infuriating neighbors against each one and the other. (Laura, 2010)

The acquirement of these water rights led to fury amongst local farmers, which exploded into full violence in 1924, at the same time portions of the water system were interfered with by neighboring farmers. Finally Los Angeles obtained a huge portion of the water rights to above the land in the valley in that all inflows to Owens Lake were nearly entirely sidetracked. The lake afterward desiccated fully, leaving the current alkali objects which afflict the southern valley through alkali dust tempest (Laura, 2010).

As a lot of natives traveled to California when the United States took over the territory following the1847 Mexican American war in as well as the1849 gold rush, innovative systems of transportation were initiated. Steamships embarked on normal services from San Francisco in addition to that the earliest transcontinental railroad was launched. These developments united California with the eastern as well as the central parts of the United States (Laura, 2010).

The opportunity unlocked by the opening up of this border line also allowed the newly settled land to be used for farming as well as for grazing. Agriculture as well as livestock major development was founded. This increase in inhabitants along with homestead led to some clashes which included a war of water among farmers and ranchers close to the Owen valley and the fast growing city of Los Angeles which had been developed in a dry region in southern California. The taking of so much water by Eaton along with Mulholland from the normally productive valley ultimately made it desiccated and useless for agriculture. (Walton, 1992)

In 1970, Los Angeles Department of Water and Power finished a second canal from Owens Valley. More and more of the surface water got diverted and the groundwater started being drained to provide for the new canal. Owens Valley wells and seeps dried up and vanished, in addition vegetation which was dependent on the groundwater started to die.According to Dan OSullivan the pursuit for legal action began and in 1997 a Memorandum of Understanding was signed between
Memorandum of understanding The Owens Valley Committee, Los Angeles Inyo County, the Sierra Club, as well as other involved factions.A memorandum of understanding is a document describing a bilateral or multilateral agreement between parties. It expresses a convergence of will between the parties, indicating an intended common line of action...

The memorandum gave specific provisions of how the lower Owens River could be re-watered by June of 2003. LADWP fail to meet this deadline and was taken to court again. In a different agreement, and this instance included the State of California, Los Angeles guaranteed by September 2005 it would re-water the lower Owens River. By February 2005, LADWP stated that it was doubtful if it would meet the extended deadline but at least by 2008 Los Angeles had re-watered the lower Owens River (OSullivan)

Being a fertile fishery ground, the California Delta has hosted  a number of important events in deep fishing history for instance the discovery of flipping by Thomas Dee, four BASS victories by Robert Lees, as well as 14-pound, 9-ounce largemouth in 1999 by  Mark Tylers which  still stands as the largest ever trapped in a Bass contest. What traditionally has been a place for tough battles fought between anglers has become the scene for a soaring sequence of conflict in Californias ongoing wars on water. The state government of California, along with the states corporate agricultural businesses, is determined to modify the course of the states main central watercourse as well as freshwater fishery (OSullivan).

OSullivan states the California Delta is a man made levees and a complex network which holds the greater part of Californias most precious product and that is water. although mainly well-known for its link to the San Francisco Bay, the Delta ultimately gets the water which is released from Shasta Dam, which also gets its water from the McCloud River, Sacramento River, as well as the Pit River from the Oroville Dam, which eventually holds back the Feather River from Folsom Dam which includes both forks of the American River.

Between the three biggest watershed storage reservoirs in northern California, the San Joaquin River is the heart of the Delta. In addition the vast and plenty of fresh water coming from the northern part of California as well as the eastern Sierra Mountains go all the way to the California Delta (OSullivan)

The California state is making every effort to redirect much of the water supply of the Delta through a Bay Delta Conservation Plan, or BDCP for which its plans began in 2008.part of the agreement is the construction of 500 foot wide canal known as the New Conveyance which will take out fresh water from the Sacramento River above the Delta and carry it all around the middle of the Delta to Tracy. It is assumed that this is just a resurgence of an earlier Peripheral Canal discarded by voters back in 1982. Alongside the most modern canal, a sequence of tide management gates will be constructed, where two will be permanently in the western Delta and two will be located in the central Delta as long term solutions. This is so as to let the fresh water which flows into the system on high surge to be controlled as the wave starts to turn around for the outflow (OSullivan).

Johnson in his article the water wars Californias salmon versus agribiz interests pushes the notion that water and money surges in the same direction in California State. He adds that the salmon fishers of West Coast have been denied of their constitutional rights and source of revenue by influential corporate agricultural individuals in the San Joaquin Valley. Despite the fact that they are a small number, the managers as well as the owners of these huge agricultural production ventures have been capable to grab the states water for their personal use through effectively sponsored political lobbying as well as a sophisticated publicity campaign.

They precisely obtain water pursuant through junior state water human rights which means they come instantly second in allocation following individuals who have held these civil rights longer.  However the regulator has been cranked extensively and has become open in favor of them, at extremely subsidized costs. Nevertheless their single reaction has been to solicit for more. Even more disheartening is that theyre not even using it for growing crops instead they are selling it.

Conclusion
In 1982 the time the Peripheral Canal was rejected by the voters, the population of California was almost 25 million. At the moment, the people of California are more than 38 million and this number is increasing. The unfortunate thing is that the water resource as well as the infrastructure network which is in place presently, is basically the same like it was in the 1960s, at a time where the general population was approximately 15 million people. For this reason, demography is not essentially the future when the Californias water system is put into consideration.

What we can learn from the accounts and the histories of the California water wars at the moment is that it is really doubtful if there will ever be any political faction that would be able to bring a solution to what we would call The Perfect Drought except there is an  event which is catastrophic, similar to the levees in the Sacramento Delta rupturing owing to too much rainfall or maybe an earthquake on the San Andreas Fault, similar to the current one in China, which would  result to a breach of the levees which surround the delta. The water fortunes in Southern California could be reliant on an erratic catastrophic event. Despite the fact that we cannot have power over political authority, brilliant leaders ought to be tolerant as well as preparing for it. This is because water wars are long-lasting conflicts of attrition and to those who are patient and enduring along with being unrelenting get the rewards of triumph.