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53 Urb. Law. 161 (2025-2026)
Owens Valley Redux: The Case for Los Angeles and Why It Matters for the Planet

handle is hein.journals/urban53 and id is 175 raw text is: 161 Owens Valley Redux: The Case for Los Angeles and Why It Matters for the Planet Jonathan Zasloff* The bourgeoisie has subjected the country to the rule of the towns. It has created enormous cities, has greatly increased the urban population as compared with the rural, and has thus rescued a considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural lfe.1 Friedrich Engels & Karl Marx Everyone knows that Los Angeles stole its water from the Owens Valley, creating environmental devastation and a legacy of rapac- ity. It is such a commonplace that it needs only assertion. Even the finest journalists can say in passing that the City of Los Angeles reach[ed] up and over the mountain to steal the Owens River.2 Outstanding scholars, even with expertise in Los Angeles, state casually that city officials secretly planned to steal Owens Valley river water,3 and the Los Angeles Times, long a booster paper, has conceded that the aqueduct was acquired through stealth and *Professor of Law, UCLA School of Law; Professor of Urban Planning (by courtesy), UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. JD, Yale Law School; PhD, Harvard. E-mail: zasloff@law.ucla.edu. 1. FRIEDRICH ENGELS & KARL MARX, THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO ch. 1 (1848). 2. Mark Arax, How We Drained California Dry, MIT TECH. REV. (Dec. 16, 2021), https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/12/16/1041296/california-climate-change -water-drought/. I am not being facetious when I compliment Arax. His book on California water is required reading for those interested in the subject; MARK ARAX, THE DREAMT LAND: CHASING WATER AND DUST ACROSS CALIFORNIA (2019). 3. George J. Sanchez, Generations of Segregation: Immigrant Dreams and Segregated Lives in Metropolitan Los Angeles, in NEW WORLD CITIES: CHALLENGES OF URBANIZATION AND GLOBALIZATION IN THE AMERICAS 210, 215 (John Tutino & Martin V. Melosi eds., 2019). Again, I am not being facetious: I am an admirer of Professor Sanchez's scholarship. See, e.g., GEORGE J. SANCHEZ, BECOMING MEXICAN- AMERICAN: ETHNICITY, CULTURE, AND IDENTITY IN CHICANO LOS ANGELES, 1900-45 (1995).