Those of us in California know all too well what’s its like to be living in the midst of a drought.  Gov. Jerry Brown recently put in place restrictions demanding that urban water use be cut by 25%.  Already the push back is coming.  In a state where agriculture uses well over 50% of the state’s water, and only contributes 3% to the state’s economy, urban water users are becoming angry.There is much talk about pipelines, about desalination, and new technology to bring water to the parched desert that is much of California. 

All of this echoes a battle of an earlier time.  A time, at the turn of the last century, when a man named William Mulholland would devise a plan to make the desert that was Los Angeles bloom and allow it to become the world class, cutting edge metropolis that it is today.Perhaps in these dry times, its instructive to look back to that previous period and see what we might learn.

My conversation with Les Standiford about his book Water to the Angels: William Mulholland, His Monumental Aqueduct, and the Rise of Los Angeles