LA's water department casts its shadow over the Owens Valley

Bobbie Stryffeler-Bornmann moved to the eastern Sierra with her husband to chase snow. Twenty-eight years later, her daughters grown, she works in the Bishop administrative offices of the LADWP.

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Molly Peterson/KPCC

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Tim Batchelder grew up in the Owens Valley, and calls high school antics he might have gotten up to on backroads and along drainage ditches "mild." Now he's a labor supervisor for the LADWP.

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Molly Peterson/KPCC

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While folks here greeted the LA Aqueduct as an engineering marvel in 1913, ranchers and farmers in the Owens Valley called it a water grab. KPCC's Molly Peterson takes a look at how locals are reconciling that sometimes uncomfortable bond.

While folks here greeted the LA Aqueduct as an engineering marvel in 1913, ranchers and farmers in the Owens Valley called it a water grab.

One-hundred years later, that view endures, but it's been tempered somewhat. Over the decades, the LA Department of Water and Power has provided jobs to thousands of valley residents.

KPCC's Molly Peterson takes a look at how locals are reconciling that sometimes uncomfortable bond.