Where your drinking water comes from, L.A.?

Water Sources for Los Angeles, California

To reach many of us, water must travel long distances through complex delivery systems such as the:

**State Water Project: is a water storage and delivery system comprised of 34 storage facilities, reservoirs and lakes; 20 pumping plants; 4 pumping- generating plants; 5 hydroelectric power plants; and about 701 miles of open canals and pipelines. The project begins at Oroville Dam on the Feather River and ends at Lake Perris near Riverside. At the Tehachapi Mountains, giant pumps lift the water from the California Aqueduct some 2,000 feet over the mountains and into Southern California.
The project makes deliveries to two-thirds of California’s population (approximately 20 million Californians) and about 660,000 acres or irrigated farmland. It is maintained and operated by the California Department of Water Resources.

**Colorado River Aqueduct: The aqueduct impounds water from the Colorado River at Lake Havasu on the California-Arizona border to the east side of the Santa Ana Mountains. The system is a 242 miles water conveyance in Southern California composed of two reservoirs, five pumping stations, 63 miles of canals, 92 miles of tunnels, and 84 miles of buried conduit and siphons.
California is entitled to 4.4 million acre-feet of water annually from the river. Most of that water irrigates crops in the Palo Verde, imperial and Coachella valleys, located in the southeastern corner of the state, but the Colorado also is a vital source of water for urban southern California.
The aqueduct was constructed between 1933-1941 by the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (MWD) to bring water to the 13 cities in the south coast basin that were founding member agencies of MWD however service area now extends from Ventura county to San Diego County.

**Los Angeles Aqueduct (Owens Valley Aqueduct): is a water conveyance operated by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP), the system delivers water from the Owens River in the Eastern Sierra Nevada Mountains into the City of Los Angeles, California. It consist of two sections, the first aqueduct completed in 1913 is 233 miles of 12-foot diameter steel pipe with a conveyance capacity of 520 (cu ft) per second which uses gravity two carry the water, so it is relatively autonomous and cost efficient.
The second Los Angeles Aqueduct, completed in 1970, added another 50 percent capacity to the water system (290 cu-ft per second). It starts at the Haiwee Reservoir, just south of Owens Lake and runs roughly in parallel to the first aqueduct, it carries water 137 miles and merges near the Antelope Valley Community Warm Springs.
The two aqueducts deliver an average of 430 million gallons a day to Los Angeles.

**Groundwater: About 30 percent of California’s total annual water supply comes from groundwater in normal years, and up to 60 percent in drought years. Local communities’ usage may be different; many areas rely exclusively on groundwater while others use only surface water supplies.
The Water Replenishment District (WRD) manages groundwater for nearly four million residents in 43 cities of Southern Los Angeles County. WRD is involved in groundwater monitoring, safe drinking water programs, combating seawater intrusion and groundwater replenishment operations throughout Southern Los Angeles County. http://www.wrd.org/
As part of a cooperative project with local water-management agencies to better understand the ground-water system and geology of the Los Angeles Basin, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) has drilled more than 30 monitoring wells throughout the basin, as deep as 1500 feet below city street, and has collected chemical, geologic, hydrologic, and geophysical data from these and other wells in the region. http://www.usgs.gov/