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Written by: Guest Commentary
Devon Provo
Devon Provo works for Accelerate Resilience L.A. as a senior policy manager and urban planner. Altadena is where she resides.
I usually take my dog for a morning stroll to Hahamongna Watershed Park in Pasadena, stopping by the reservoir to observe ducks and grebes gliding across the lake. It’s a calm routine, but the quietness seems greater now that Eaton Canyon was destroyed by fire in January, as if this land has something to say.
I’ve worked on land use and water policy for years as an urban planner. I don’t witness any strange catastrophes when I stroll around my Altadena area. In a far older story of the struggle to control nature and the repercussions that last for generations, I see a moment of reckoning.
Governor Gavin Newsom is taking action to expedite the Delta Conveyance Project, giving lawmakers a familiar option as Californians grapple with the aftermath of increasingly severe climate disasters. However, we need to face some difficult lessons from the past before spending billions on yet another significant water project.
Judge Benjamin Eaton, an Anglo-American settler who constructed Pasadena’s initial water infrastructure in the 1860s, is honored by the name Eaton Canyon. Eaton designed irrigation ditches to move water away from Hahamongna, which the native Tongva residents called Flowing Waters, Fruitful Valley, in order to encourage settler agriculture and real estate development. The destructive pattern that started with the Spanish mission system, when the violent colonization of Hahamongna Village upset the sacred community’s ties with land and water, was exacerbated by his interference.
Frederick, Eaton’s son, subsequently carried out his father’s goals more extensively. Frederick Eaton, who served as mayor of Los Angeles in the early 1900s, collaborated with William Mulholland to build the L.A. Aqueduct, a vast waterway system that reroutes water from Mono Lake and Owens Valley—known to the Native Americans as Payahuunad—to support the growth of Los Angeles 220 miles south.
The ecosystems and ancestral grounds of the Nm, Newe, and Kootzaduka people were devastated in one of the most important and damaging water transfers in American history. At one time, Owens Lake, also known as Patsiata, was teeming with life. Once it dried out, it became the nation’s biggest source of dust pollution, exposing locals to pollutants that raised their chance of developing cancer.
The Eastern Sierra was not the only place affected. Even Angelenos suffered.
For over a century, Los Angeles has been bound by an extraction paradigm that was established by the aqueduct. The fact that the rivers, marshes, and groundwater that created this area were buried, paved over, and drained is revealed by the common misconception that Los Angeles is a desert.
Throughout the 20th century, Los Angeles prioritized water imports, urban growth, and fire suppression techniques above investing in local alternatives like stormwater capture, recycled water, and fire stewardship, making it more susceptible to disasters.
As a result, runoff from Los Angeles rushes to the ocean through concrete channels, avoiding the land beneath our feet, which is thirsty. Once used to treat Indigenous cultural burns, fire-adapted chaparral is misinterpreted and improperly handled.Fuel is always found for fire.
Although the Eaton Fire was not started by this legacy, it did create the conditions for its expansion and destruction. The truth eventually catches up with us. What we attempt to forget, the land remembers.
Policymakers, however, depend on public amnesia. The governor runs the risk of making history with his most recent attempt to get parliamentary approval for the Delta Conveyance before the session concludes in September. The same idea of control, the delusion that humans are apart from the same ecosystems that support us, that pointless attempts at dominance may protect us from the delicate, unsettling truth of our reliance with nature, is what makes this massive water diversion project successful.
Tragedies like the Eaton Fire serve as a reminder that genuine leadership starts with humility and the guts to examine oneself and acknowledge that we are not in charge but rather in a connection with living systems.
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Repair may be constructed one decision at a time, just as destruction can.
The Owens Valley Indian Water Commission in Payahuunad is still fighting for water justice and the restoration of Owens Lake. Tribal governments and Indigenous-led organizations, including the Sacred Places Institute and the Tataviam Land Conservancy, are working to restore ancestral grounds, revive native species, and advance traditional ecological knowledge here in Los Angeles.
Grassroots organizations around the area are restoring connections with soil and water, removing asphalt, planting native trees, and turning concrete schoolyards into living landscapes. Local organizations are taking stormwater collection, recycled water, groundwater recharge, and conservation seriously—solutions we’ve long disregarded.
The most recent chapter in the lengthy Eaton tale is the Eaton Fire. A term that was once praised for its ability to control water today represents a fire that exposes our limitations.
The irony raises a more profound query: what constitutes accountability when harm is passed down through families while the effects are still being felt? We may already possess the control we desire in our capacity to exert self-control, respect boundaries, and maintain relationships with things we don’t fully comprehend.
We must make difficult trade-offs, just like our predecessors. However, in contrast to them, we have the advantage of hindsight and the option to choose a different course of action if we so desire. Shall we accept it?
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Another casualty of a bone-dry winter: LA won t take less water from Mono Lake
Newsom wanted to fast-track the Delta tunnel project. The Legislature slowed the flow
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