This episode we examine the Los Angeles aqueducts, which moves water over the Mojave desert and into Los Angeles by gravity alone, and supplied water for a population of 2 million people for over 20 years.

The project is often referred to as the greatest engineering achievement since the Panama Canal, despite the fact that the project includes the construction of the St Francis Dam, which is widely considered the worst American civil engineering disaster of the 20th century. The very first time the dam was filled to capacity it would experience a catastrophic failure, resulting in countless deaths and eventually the establishment of the Board of Civil Engineers being founded in 1929 and the end of the self-trained engineer.

The need for the aqueduct was framed as life or death for Los Angeles, when in reality the water they would redirect to LA would also be enough to supply the San Fernando Valley north of Los Angeles. In the 1920s the Waterson brothers would organize a group of farmers to rebel against the construction of the aqueduct and destruction of their livelihoods in what we now know as the California water wars. Today the Owens Lake is completely dried up, little more than a salt and alkali flats.

The construction of the gargantuan 375km long aqueduct required a great deal of infrastructure to be built just to support construction, and as such was built in sections as the construction of roads and power lines caught up to accommodate construction. Transporting the materials alone was a massive challenge, and led to the creating of the Caterpillar, a tank-like piece of machinery at the time, and today one of the world’s largest construction equipment companies.

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Learn more at: MeasuredInMetric.com

Edited by: Astronomic Audio

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