That is, short of ousting the Department of Water and Power or reclaiming full self-determination, they won most of the major legal battles and forced Los Angeles into an agreement that demanded accountability to local authority.īy means of longitudinal analysis it is possible not only to follow a seemingly defeated movement through its dormancy to rekindled success, tracing both phases to their antecedents, but also to explain the different outcomes. Second, county government shared with citizen groups the responsibility for waging the struggle insurgent leadership passed back and forth over several stages of the conflict. It was, foremost, a legal struggle orchestrated by state and federal environmental legislation and conducted chiefly within bureaucratic arenas. Yet in key respects the movement of the 1970s differed from its predecessor.
Once more, the valley created traditional citizens' committees to circulate petitions, lobby state and federal representatives, press law-suits, and, in moments of exasperation, to wreak popular justice on city property. Citizens organized to fight the expansionary policies of Los Angeles, which they believed were again aimed at destroying their communities and the natural environment, by resurrecting the water wars of the 1920s in symbol and strategy.
Locally, the movement was new in some respects and a continuation of the old resistance in others. A new rebellion swept the Owens Valley during the fifteen years that followed Earth Day and the proclamation of a national environmental movement in 1970.
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