NARRATOR: Man-made rivers,
with them a small town becomes a vital metropolis. Arid land becomes
bountiful farmland. Great fortunes are made,
but it's never simple. Not everybody wants water
moved from there to here. Now, the story of
politics and greed, of dangerous work
and great rewards, of aqueducts on
"Modern Marvels." [theme music] NARRATOR: The Los
Angeles area is an ever-expanding megalopolis
of over 14 million people. It is the hub of the Pacific
Rim and the entertainment capital of the world. In a city that is actually
drier than Beirut, Lebanon, water delivered from a
source over 200 miles away made all of this growth
and prosperity possible. Los Angeles could not exist
without the Los Angeles Aqueduct, yet the
man who created this life-giving artificial
river is now mostly forgotten. To millions of Los
Angeles residents, his name is simply
a street that runs above the city atop the
Santa Monica Mountains. Every day, thousands
of motorists pass a fountain
built in his memory, unaware of its significance. MARGARET LESLIE
DAVIS: Few people know that it was named after the
man who built the Los Angeles aqueduct and literally brought
water to the Los Angeles basin. The man who changed
the face of a city and the face of a nation. NARRATOR: His legend
may have faded, yet in 1913, William
Mulholland was an international celebrity
and one of the best-known men in America. Mulholland was an Irish
immigrant, who left his homeland in 1869 at age 14. He arrived in Los Angeles then a
dusty town of only 7,000 people in 1876 and found work as
a ditch digger for the Los Angeles City Water Company. William Mulholland
was a charismatic, self-taught engineer
with literally very little schooling. Yet he was an amazing reader. And he had this sort
of photographic memory that served him
throughout his life. NARRATOR: Mulholland
rose rapidly in the Los Angeles Water Company. In 1902, the city
purchased the company, and Mulholland, the
former ditch digger, became Chief Superintendent of
the new municipal organization. His mentor during
those early years was Fred Eaton, who had been
superintendent of the water company before
Mulholland and later became mayor of Los Angeles. The two men were very close
despite their differences. Mulholland was more
the salt of the earth, rough-hewn type, who
loved the outdoors, loved to be with his men. Eaton had a very
elite education. And he ran in the very
sophisticated Los Angeles social and political circles. NARRATOR: By 1904, Los
Angeles had grown to a city of almost 200,000 people. After his term as
mayor, Eaton suggested to Mulholland that they
travel to the Owens River, to investigate it as a possible
source of additional water for the expanding city. After five days of drinking
whiskey and camping out at night, they reached the
banks of the clear, cold rushing river. Mulholland shouted over the
roaring waters to his friend, I thought you were crazy
but our supply of water is indeed in the Owens Valley. This pure mountain runoff
could provide not only for LA's 200,000
current residents but for 2 million more as well. However, bringing the water
from this river over mountains and through the Mojave
Desert would not be easy. Mulholland was standing
almost 250 miles away from Los Angeles. William Mulholland
was certainly not the first person to try
to bring distant waters to a population center. Civilizations in Asia
and the Middle East built aqueducts
thousands of years ago, but the Roman system is the most
famous and extensive example of water delivery from
the ancient world. In fact, the word
aqueduct is derived from two Latin words,
"aqua" meaning water and "ducere" meaning to lead. The Romans built their
first aqueduct, the Aqua Appia in approximately 310 BC. It was about 10 miles long
and mostly underground. However, today, the sections
of Roman aqueducts that are above ground are more famous. LE VAL LUND: You can see
in locations in Spain and near Rome the bridge
structures they used to cross canyons because they
didn't have steel pipe or iron pipe in order
to cross those facilities. NARRATOR: One of the
most famous structures is the El Puente
Aqueduct in Spain. Cars can still drive
under the bridge section of this aqueduct, built
in the first century AD. The arches are simply
the support structures for the downward
sloping canal that allowed water to gradually
flow to Roman cities by gravity alone. Eventually, the capital of Rome
was served by 12 aqueducts, delivering about 38 million
gallons of water a day from sources over 50 miles away. Most of the 359 total miles
of aqueducts leading into Rome were underground so
as not to interfere with the hustle and bustle
of this ancient city. Some of these
ancient wonders still deliver water to fountains
and other public areas. LE VAL LUND: The aqueduct
was carved out of rock. And I'm sure that they have
been maintained over the years. But they were pretty
substantial materials and so they still exist today. NARRATOR: As with the
aqueducts of Rome, William Mulholland thought
that gravity alone could bring water to Los Angeles. The Owens River ran
through the foothills of the Sierra Nevada
Mountains at an elevation of over 4,000 feet. As Mulholland and Fred
Eaton traveled back to Los Angeles in
1904, they excitedly mapped and surveyed possible
routes for the man-made river. But Mulholland had no chance to
prepare for the sudden betrayal that was about to
endanger the entire Los Angeles Aqueduct project
before it had even started. Aqueducts will return in a
moment on "Modern Marvels." We now return to Aqueducts
on "Modern Marvels." After William Mulholland
and Fred Eaton returned from their trip to
the Owens River, Mulholland met with
the Los Angeles Board of Water Commissioners. He told them of his plan to
save the city from drought and provide for almost
unlimited expansion by building a man-made
river through the desert. The commissioners were
very enthusiastic. Everyone was sworn to
secrecy so property values along the proposed
aqueduct route wouldn't soar on speculation. But several days
later, Mulholland received some shocking news
about his friend and mentor. MARGARET LESLIE
DAVIS: Fred Eaton secretly began to
acquire key parcels along the aqueduct route. When William Mulholland learned
of this, he hit the roof, and the two friends
argued bitterly. NARRATOR: Eaton intended to
lease the land back to the city and make millions of dollars
over the decades to follow. But Mulholland
undermined Eaton's plan, convincing the
federal government to require that the city own
all the lands along the route. Eaton still made several
hundred thousand dollars when he sold his Owens
Valley land to Los Angeles. Eaton was determined
to make more money, and Mulholland was determined to
provide Los Angeles with water. The two men achieved
their separate goals by tricking Owens Valley
farmers along the river into selling their land. Eaton claimed to be working
on a federal irrigation project that would bring more
water to the farmer's fields. In reality, they were
selling their land and their Owens
River water rights to the city of Los Angeles. LE VAL LUND: There
were certainly those people who felt that this
was taking of their property improperly. However, if you owned
the land, then you had the water rights to that land. And then the city leased
back to those original owners the land for them to farm. NARRATOR: Once all the
property had been secured, Mulholland and
the city officials could inform the public
of the huge project. However, the group
still needed the voters to approve the $24 million
cost of this man-made river. Cleverly, the
campaign took place in the summer, the peak of
the heat of Los Angeles' hot, hot summer
to convince voters to say, yes, please, let's
build the Los Angeles Aqueduct. NARRATOR: Not surprisingly,
the sweating voters approve the measure
by a 10 to 1 margin. Mulholland would finally
get to build his aqueduct. Full-scale construction
began in March, 1909, with an army of over 5,000 men. The proposed
233-mile aqueduct was designed as a series of
tunnels, open canals, and covered conduits,
depending on the terrain. In addition, sections
of huge steel siphons were hauled to the site. Some pieces were 8 to
12 feet in diameter and weighed 26 tons each. Mulholland claimed that the
progressively smaller diameters of the pipes would
create increased pressure to force the water uphill. LE VAL LUND: What is called a
siphon is really a misnomer. It's strictly a
pressure pipeline. And so where the canals or
the conduits or the tunnels had to cross a canyon,
then the canyon was crossed by just a
very simple pressure pipe. NARRATOR: Water would
be pushed up and out the end of the canyon
as long as the elevation was the same or lower than at
the beginning of the siphon. This type of exhausting and
sometimes dangerous labor was nothing new for the
average aqueduct workers, who came to the project
from mining in lumber camps throughout the West. Saloons and brothels
quickly sprang up in the small desert towns
near the construction camps. MARGARET LESLIE
DAVIS: They would spend their entire paycheck in
a weekend, gambling, drinking on these incredible binges. NARRATOR: Fights and
cases of venereal disease were common,
especially after payday when the liquor was flowing. But despite the wild nature
of most aqueduct laborers, the Los Angeles
newspapers portrayed them as hardworking, decent
men with few vices. The papers also built William
Mulholland into a hero of mythic proportions. One article in the
"Los Angeles Times" declared, "the aqueduct's
so damn big, there's nothing in the ordinary mind to
measure it by unless you stand it up to old Bill Mulholland." The editors in
Los Angeles wanted to satisfy their readers
with exciting wholesome tales of adventure. However, there was also a
much more sinister reason for the glowing
reports of old Bill Mulholland and his big ditch. Aqueducts will return in a
moment on "Modern Marvels." We now return to Aqueducts
on "Modern Marvels." As the enthusiastic reports
of the aqueduct's progress and William
Mulholland's leadership continued in the Los
Angeles newspapers, some citizens realized that
the highly-positive articles about the project might
not be the whole story. Several wealthy businessmen,
including the publishers of the "Los Angeles Times"
and "Los Angeles Express" newspapers, had purchased
16,200 acres of land in the arid San
Fernando Valley in 1905, a year before the
public was informed. This seemingly worthless land
was adjacent to the proposed end point of the aqueduct. They had acted on inside
information provided by Water Commission
member and fellow investor Moses Hazeltine Sherman. Los Angeles did face a water
crisis without the construction of the aqueduct. But there's no doubt that
the newspapermen who heralded the aqueduct stood
to profit from it handsomely upon its completion. NARRATOR: Regardless of the
positive spin in the papers, old Bill was a likeable man
with his thick Irish accent and quick wit. The laborers
respected him because of his working man's past. WILLIAM MULHOLLAND (VOICEOVER):
I would rather sit around camp with them than be in a circle
of lawyers, doctors, or bankers. Professional men are trained
to conceal their thoughts, but these men are
frank, blunt, and human. William Mulholland. He was a field person and
liked to be on the job. And presumably,
he was very active and had little
time in the office. NARRATOR: Mulholland
hated to write reports, preferring to keep
all of his notes in his head. Supposedly, this man,
they called the Chief, could recall the
elevation above sea level and the exact width of a canal
or diameter of a pipeline at any point along
the aqueduct route. Mulholland often
used competition among crews and financial
bonuses to provide incentive. In fact, teams working at
the north and south ends of the proposed five-mile
long Elizabeth Lake tunnel had been competing against each
other since the very first day to see who could reach
the center mark first. Tunneling inside the
6,100-foot mountain, the aqueduct's greatest
natural barrier was one of the hardest
and most dangerous jobs along the entire route. 10 feet of progress
during a 12-hour shift was considered an achievement
inside the sandstone and granite beast. LE VAL LUND: Tunneling was
done by drilling and setting dynamite and
hauling the material out by little railroad cars. NARRATOR: The men
dragging the broken pieces of rock out of the tunnel
were known as "muckers," because they were constantly
traveling back and forth through the cold wet
mud as surface water from lakes on top of a mountain
percolated through the stone and into the tunnel. Nearly two years after
construction began, John Gray's north team was
working a mile and a half inside the mountain when they
heard a loud swish behind them. The tunnel had collapsed,
and a 15-foot wall of water from a pocket
inside the mountain raced towards them. William Mulholland
quickly rush to the scene and worriedly paced in front
of the tunnel entrance. Several hours later, Gray
and all of his men emerged. They were covered in muck and
blood but they were alive. Working conditions
outside of the tunnels were difficult, too, since the
men had to endure the wildly fluctuating desert
elements, where temperatures ranged from 110 to 20 degrees. Despite the dangerous work
and the extreme conditions, only five men died during the
construction of the aqueduct. Finally, at the
beginning of 1911, a drill bit poked through the
south passage of Elizabeth Lake tunnel into the north corridor,
barely missing a mucker's head. After 1,239 days, the five-mile
long beast had been conquered. MARGARET LESLIE DAVIS: The day
the two men met pick to pick, shovel to shovel inside
this huge excavated tunnel was one of the greatest moments
of William Mulholland's life as the aqueduct
neared its completion. NARRATOR: Once the Elizabeth
Lake Tunnel was finished, the main challenge remaining
was the completion of the 22 siphons along the route. The longest one
measured 15,596 feet. The siphons worked. The fact that electrical
pumps were not necessary meant that once the
aqueduct was completed, it would generate power by
the force of falling water without consuming any energy. This provided the city
with cheap electricity as well as abundant water. Over 100,000 men had
worked on the aqueduct during its seven-year
construction, but the responsibility for
its successful completion had rested squarely
on the shoulders of William Mulholland. As the final tests
were run in 1913, he finally had a
chance to reflect on the enormous challenge
that he had faced. WILLIAM MULHOLLAND
(VOICEOVER): I don't know why I ever went into this job. I guess it was the Irish in me. Nature is the squarest
fighter there is, and I wanted the fight. When I saw it staring
me in the face, I couldn't back away from it. William Mulholland, 1913. NARRATOR: On November 5, 1913,
a warm sunny day, 43,000 Los Angeles residents, one out
of every five people living in the city at the
time, made the journey to the grand Cascades in the
north San Fernando Valley. After many speeches praising
his determination and vision, Mulholland finally spoke. He credited the laborers
for getting the job done and praised Fred Eaton, who
had decided not to attend due to the bitter
feelings between them, for conceiving the idea
in the first place. Then, Mulholland gave the
signal to turn the huge wheels to open the gate. MARGARET LESLIE DAVIS: And
as the water thundered down, children ran
alongside the banks. Many of the people
in the community literally waded into the canal,
jubilant at their deliverance, that the day had finally come. NARRATOR: Above
the din, Mulholland shouted the simple words,
"there it is, take it." MARGARET LESLIE DAVIS: Thanks
to these amazing news stories describing it inch by inch,
foot by a foot, mile by mile, progress of this phenomenal
engineering feat, William Mulholland became
literally the most famous man in the West. NARRATOR: The newspaper
publishers and land syndicate members, who had helped create
this international hero, became rich beyond
their wildest dreams. The Owens Valley
water transformed the nearly worthless scrub into
a fertile agricultural area. Within a decade, the
city's population had more than doubled. And the San Fernando lands were
subdivided into rows of houses. The syndicate members made
profits of over $100 million. But few people in Los Angeles
had noticed that the farmlands of the Owens Valley were
slowly being swallowed by the growing desert. Mulholland was a hero, but
his sparkling public image did not last forever. As their fields dried and their
livelihoods were increasingly threatened, the Owens Valley
farmers lashed out by attacking the aqueduct with dynamite. MARGARET LESLIE DAVIS: William
Mulholland's greatest flaw was his inability to
appreciate the so-called wrath of the Owens Valley
farmers and the depletion of their indigenous
water supply. NARRATOR: To safeguard
the city's water supply against this terrorism,
Mulholland built a string of reservoirs near Los Angeles. In the summer of
1926, Mulholland christened the St.
Francis Dam and Reservoir above San Francisquito Canyon,
40 miles north of Los Angeles. Mulholland was praised
for his technical genius in designing it. Then, three minutes before
midnight on March 12, 1928, the unthinkable happened. MARGARET LESLIE DAVIS: The
giant St. Francis Dam suddenly collapsed, spewing 20
billion gallons of water, a 100-foot wall of
death, of roaring water and debris
thundered through the San Francisquito Canyon. No one in its path could escape. Over 500 people were killed. NARRATOR: The
murderous wall of water raced southwest until it
rushed into the Pacific Ocean 70 miles away. Bodies and debris
washed up on beaches as far away as San Diego. Mulholland and
engineer Harvey Van Norman, one of Mulholland's
closest confidantes, rushed to the scene. MARGARET LESLIE DAVIS:
William Mulholland was overcome with grief when
he saw the few survivors that still were there, half-dressed,
shivering in the dawn light as this hellish scene of death
and destruction was revealed. The most famous man in
the West became its most hated citizen overnight. NARRATOR: One woman who had
lost her entire family left a sign in front of the
remnants of her home. It read simply,
"kill Mulholland." He was put on trial
for manslaughter but was found innocent
of any criminal intent although his reputation
was still shattered. William Mulholland
spent his final years in depressed
isolation in his home. He died on July 22,
1935, of arteriosclerosis at the age of 79. Despite the disgrace of the
St. Francis Dam collapse, thousands of people still
came to his funeral. They had not forgotten
that Mulholland had accomplished the
Herculean task of bringing water to the City of Angels. MARGARET LESLIE DAVIS:
William Mulholland, this Irish immigrant,
in the end created the greatest human
migration in world history. Thanks to the Los Angeles
Aqueduct, some 14 million people now reside in Southern
California in a place where there could only be enough
water to support originally, say, 250,000 people. NARRATOR: Los Angeles was
not the only California city searching for water
at the turn of the century. Another battle was erupting
between the city government of San Francisco and the
best-known conservationist of our time over a beautiful
valley in one of our nation's most treasured national parks. Aqueducts will return in a
moment on "Modern Marvels." We now return to Aqueducts
on "Modern Marvels." Just as the residents
of the Owens Valley had been struggling to preserve
their farms from the thirst of Los Angeles, so John
Muir, the famous naturalist, was fighting to
save the mountains that he loved from the
growing city of San Francisco. The prize that the city desired
was one of the crown jewels of the Sierra Nevada Mountains,
the spectacular granite walls, waterfalls, meadows, and streams
of the Hetch Hetchy Valley, Yosemite's sister
valley to the north. San Francisco officials
wanted to dam Hetch Hetchy and build a 150-mile long
aqueduct to their city. John Muir arrived in
California in 1868 and soon found his way to the
wild Sierra Nevada Mountains. JOHN MUIR (VOICEOVER): It
seemed to me the Sierra should be called not the
Nevada or Snowy Range but the Range of Light,
the most divinely beautiful of all the mountain
chains I have ever seen. John Muir. NARRATOR: Muir's writings
and political efforts helped to convince
Congress to create Yosemite National Park in 1890. Included in the
park was not only the Yosemite Valley but the
Hetch Hetchy Valley, as well. However, in 1905, Muir learned
that city and county officials in San Francisco were
looking to the scenic valley and its Tuolumne River as a
cheap source of water and power for their growing population. You've got the city situated
on the tip of a peninsula, and there's really no
water supply to speak of. The very first supplies
came from down the peninsula and gradually got
further and further away. NARRATOR: The battle that
ensued over the proposed dam and aqueduct continued
for eight years and drew three
presidents into the fray. In 1903, President
Theodore Roosevelt traveled to Yosemite
where he and Muir camped out and hiked for three days. They enjoyed each
other's company, despite their different
attitudes towards nature. ADAM WERBACH: Roosevelt and
Muir formed a partnership to protect places so that people
with different relationships with nature could use it. So whether Roosevelt
went out to hunt buffalo or Muir went
out to enjoy flowers, they both understood that
it needed to be protected. NARRATOR: Hetch Hetchy was
safe for the time being. However, Roosevelt's Secretary
of Agriculture Gifford Pinchot did not share Muir's
conservationist ideals. DAVID BROWER: Gifford
Pinchot thought that everything in the
national forests was for sale. Muir, on the other hand,
thought that nothing in the national
parks was for sale. It deserved protection. JOHN MUIR (VOICEOVER): When
we try to pick anything out by itself, we find it
hitched to everything else in the universe. John Muir. NARRATOR: Despite Pinchot's
support of San Francisco's proposed aqueduct,
the issue was still unresolved when William
Howard Taft became president on March 4, 1909. In September of that year,
he traveled to Yosemite and asked Muir to join him. Just as he had won
over Teddy Roosevelt, Muir now convinced
President Taft that Hetch Hetchy was worth preserving. San Francisco
officials would have to wait for another
president before they could build their aqueduct. That President was
Woodrow Wilson. DAVID BROWER: The problem
in the Wilson administration is that they got somebody
in the Interior Department from San Francisco who
is making decisions. And that person came with
his mind already made up. NARRATOR: Franklin Lane, a
former city attorney for San Francisco, helped push a bill
through Congress in less than a year, allowing Hetch Hetchy to
be dammed and an aqueduct to be built. John Muir was
devastated, and his health began to deteriorate. I'll go along with the belief
that that shortened his life so that he only made 75 instead of
going on to a respectable age like mine. NARRATOR: On Christmas
Eve, 1914, just over a year after the Hetch
Hetchy bill had passed, Muir died of pneumonia. In 1914, roads and
railways were built to prepare for construction
of the 150-mile long aqueduct. City engineer Michael
O'Shaughnessy, native of Ireland like
William Mulholland, was in charge of the project. His qualifications were a
little better than Mulholland. O'Shaughnessy had some
experience building water systems in Hawaii. He had more of an education,
a practical education than Mulholland. NARRATOR: Workers on
the Hetch Hetchy project had to battle the elements
and the rugged terrain, just as the men of the
Los Angeles Aqueduct had years earlier. They endured 100 degree
heat at the lower elevations during much of the
year and frigid winters in the isolated mountains. Once the roads and
railways were open, the trees on the floor
of the scenic valley were cut down and hauled away. Shortly after that,
construction began on the controversial
Hetch Hetchy Dam, later renamed O'Shaughnessy Dam. JOSHUA MILSTEIN: Any dam builder
who came upon that site would just probably drool
at the perfect site that it is for a
dam, because it's got a huge basin
behind it that opens up and it's got granite
on both sides. So you can definitely
anchor a dam there. NARRATOR: The
granite valley walls may have provided a good anchor,
but the glacial forces that polished those sheer walls also
left a large amount of sediment behind. Crews had to dig 118
feet below the riverbed before striking
solid rock where they could set the dam's foundation. As progress on
the dam continued, other workers began excavating
a 19-mile long tunnel, known simply as Mountain Tunnel. This massive project took city
crews eight years to finish at a cost of $25 million. It runs an average of 1,000
feet below the surface and has a capacity of 470
million gallons per day. From there, the
water would drop more than 1,300 feet
onto the turbines at the Moccasin
Creek Power Plant. Falling water in this
all-gravity aqueduct would generate plenty of
revenue for San Francisco in the form of
electricity, an incentive that John Muir had
long suspected. DAVID BROWER: They wanted it
in order not to get the water but to produce hydroelectric
power and get the revenue from that. There was a very good
dam site downstream. They didn't even want to think
about it until a long time later. And of course, that carries
much more water right now. NARRATOR: But city officials
decided to build power lines only to the
privately-owned Pacific Gas and Electric Company's
Newark substation, over 20 miles from the city. This company then used its
existing network of power lines to sell the electricity
to San Francisco citizens. Just as the San Fernando
Valley land syndicate had made millions from
the Los Angeles Aqueduct, the majority shareholders
of this power company appeared to be swimming
in a river of money. In order for the aqueduct
to reach San Francisco Bay, the workers still had to tunnel
through another mountain range. Construction on the
Coast Range Tunnel began in 1927 from the
east and west ends, as well as from five shafts. Shaft crews dug straight down
to the appropriate depth, then began to tunnel
horizontally in order to join the other excavations. On July 17, 1931, workers
in the Coast Range Tunnel hit a pocket of highly
flammable methane gas trapped inside the mountain. A sudden explosion
killed 12 men. Safety precautions had
been taken, but matches and smoking materials,
which were strictly forbidden in the
mines, were found in two of the victim's pockets. On January 5, 1934, 70-year-old
chief engineer O'Shaughnessy was on hand as crews
drilled the final foot of the 25-mile long Coast
Range Tunnel, the longest in the world at the time. Once the aqueduct reached
San Francisco Bay, O'Shaughnessy and his
crew built a pipeline to run underneath a
narrow section of the Bay before water could travel
north up the peninsula. It was probably
a big cost savings to just go directly
across rather than going around the Bay. NARRATOR: Finally,
in October, 1934, the tenacious workers finished
the entire 15-mile aqueduct. However, Michael O'Shaughnessy,
who had supervised the project for more than two decades,
did not get to see the water reach San Francisco. He died of a heart attack
just 12 days before the system was put into use. Before construction
began, aqueduct proponents claim they would be transforming
a mosquito-ridden valley into a beautiful mountain
lake with fish and sailboats. But although the granite
walls were still spectacular, the constantly changing
level of the reservoir prevented any life
from returning. When John Muir lost the
battle to save Hetch Hetchy, the modern environmental
movement was really born. We began to understand why
you need to protect places like Hetch Hetchy,
because if you don't, you can only lose them once. NARRATOR: The controversial
Hetch Hetchy Aqueduct took over 20 years to build. It supplies San
Francisco with 400 million gallons of pure
Sierra Nevada water every day. Coming up, massive
modern aqueducts have been constructed
in recent years to keep pace with demand, while
scientists struggle to invent systems to provide
unlimited amounts of Earth's most precious fluid. "Modern Marvels" will return. We now return to
"Modern Marvels." Even though the Los
Angeles Aqueduct provided over 200 million
gallons of water a day, William Mulholland soon realized
this wasn't enough to satisfy the growing city. Mr. Mulholland could
see that the Los Angeles Aqueduct would not be
sufficient to supply water for Los Angeles. So he got permission to make
surveys of the Colorado River in 1923. NARRATOR: The Colorado River
Aqueduct was completed in 1941. Today, this 300-mile
system delivers over half a billion
gallons of water to the Los Angeles
area each day. However, the water needs
to be pumped uphill for much of the route, making
it more expensive than water from an all-gravity aqueduct. Since Mulholland's Los Angeles
Aqueduct provided lower cost water than the Colorado
River Aqueduct, the city decided to
increase its capacity. In 1940, the Department
of Water and Power extended it by 100 miles. And in 1970, a new pipeline
increased capacity by 50%. LE VAL LUND: The
city of Los Angeles relies on aqueducts for
approximately 85% of its water. Only 15% comes from
the local groundwater. NARRATOR: In 1960, Los
Angeles was still thirsty. Governor Edwin Brown
endorsed a proposal to build the 444-mile
long California Aqueduct, the longest in the world. LE VAL LUND: In the
1960s, the state began preliminary
investigations of bringing water to the San Francisco Bay
area, the San Joaquin Valley, and to Southern California. Because the water
supply in California, two-thirds falls north of
Sacramento, but 2/3 of the need is south of Sacramento. NARRATOR: Voters approved
the $1.75 billion bond for the series of dams,
reservoirs, and aqueducts. When the first phase of Brown's
project was completed in 1973, it was more than $1
billion over budget. JOSHUA MILSTEIN: And
the state water project is truly an amazing
undertaking because it moves such massive quantities
of water around the state. Agriculture receives 40%
of all the water delivered by the California Aqueduct. The farmland that it irrigates
in the San Joaquin Valley is some of the richest on Earth. In order to reach
Southern California, the aqueduct water is pumped
over a 3,400-foot pass in the Tehachapi Mountains. Here, one of the most
powerful water pumping plants in the world
can move two million gallons of water per minute. Once over the mountains,
the water finally flows into Southern California. But it is a fallacy
to believe that only the arid West is dependent
on these man-made rivers. New York City is served by
two major underground water tunnels, bringing 1.3 billion
gallons of fresh water from the Catskill Mountains
to the city each day via three aqueduct systems. The Delaware Aqueduct is
the newest of the three and was completed in 1967. It contains an 85-mile
long underground section, the longest continuous tunnel
of any kind in the world. It supplies about 50%
of the city's water. The other two aqueducts
are much older. And the two water
tunnels they connect to have been in constant
service since 1917 and 1936, respectively. Thousands of workers began
building a third tunnel in 1970, since the two older
works may be starting to decay. Special boring machines
nicknamed "moles" can crush five feet
of rock per hour and create smooth tunnels
up to 24-feet in diameter. They are the most critical
piece of equipment in the largest
construction project the city has ever attempted. However, even with the
sophisticated technology, city water tunnel
Number 3 may not be completed until the year 2010. As the world's population grows,
the search for fresh water is turning to the oceans. Only 6/10 of a percent
of all the water on Earth is available as fresh
water from lakes, streams, and ground
water sources. Desalinization plants
around the world remove salt from 3.7 billion
gallons of sea water every day, serving about 25 million
people, mostly in Saudi Arabia. Another alternative
to aqueducts is water reclamation or recycling. These plants take water that
has already been used in homes and treats it by removing
bacteria and harmful chemicals so that it can be
used to irrigate large public green areas, such
as landscaping along freeways. LE VAL LUND: Water reclamation
and desalinization are supplemental water supplies. They probably cannot
replace aqueduct systems because the volume of
water would be insufficient. NARRATOR: Aqueducts
have been allowing people to live together in large
cities for thousands of years. They are intricate,
expensive, and sometimes beautiful feats of
engineering that help sustain life and growth. No Western city
would be where it is without major
aqueducts bringing water where it's needed. And people don't realize
that this essential substance is brought there by somebody's
foresight many years ago. And without it, the
whole city would just dry up and blow away. NARRATOR: Yet, the flowers
and trees in the Owens Valley have disappeared. And the beautifully-rugged
Hetch Hetchy Valley, a place John Muir called
one of God's cathedrals, is now flooded. However, more aqueducts will
be necessary as people continue to move to warm, dry climates,
and the world's population continues to grow. We're going to need a pipeline. We're going the aqueducts. But we've got to have some
bit of discipline here. If we take water away from a
place, we don't take it away. We don't make it a desert. NARRATOR: Freshwater, nature's
most precious natural resource, man cannot survive without it. Millions of people
around the world depend on the thin
arteries that deliver this life-giving liquid. Ribbons of water created
by power, politics, greed, sacrifice, and genius. [theme music]
