The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) is the largest municipal utility in the United States with 8,100 megawatts of electric generating capacity (2021-2022) and delivering an average of 435 million gallons of water per day (487,000 acre-ft per year) to more than four million residents and local businesses in the City of Los Angeles.
It was founded in 1902 to supply water to residents and businesses in the Los Angeles and surrounding communities. In 1917, it began to deliver electricity to portions of the city. It has been involved in a number of controversies and media portrayals over the years, including the 1928 St. Francis Dam failure and the books Water and Power and Cadillac Desert.
History
Private operators
By the middle of the 19th century, Los Angeles's rapid population growth magnified problems with the city's water distribution system. At that time, a system of open, often polluted ditches, was reasonably effective at supplying water for agricultural production but was not suited to provide water to homes. In 1853, the city council rejected as "excessive" a closed-pipe system that would serve homes directly. As a solution, the city allowed "water carriers with jugs and horse-drawn wagons…to serve the city's domestic [water] needs." By 1857 the council came to the conclusion that the system needed to be updated, which led them to grant William G. Dryden franchise rights to provide homes with water through a system of underground water mains. The initial system served only a few homes using an unreliable network of wooden pipes. In December 1861, heavy rains destroyed the system and Dryden gave up his franchise. The city attempted contracting out water distribution rights to others, but none of the systems that resulted from these contracts were successful.
The city's previous unsuccessful attempts to allow others to develop a water system on its behalf prompted the city council to relinquish its rights to the water in the Los Angeles River in 1868, which benefited John S. Griffen, Solomon Lazard, and Prudent Beaudry, three already successful businessmen. This change was at the expense of Los Angeles, which could no longer benefit from their municipal water distribution business. The three men created the Los Angeles City Water Company, which violated many of the provisions of its lease on the Los Angeles River, including secretly tunneling under the river to extract 150 times as much water as the lease allowed. As the end of the lease drew near in the mid-1890s, popular support began to build for a return to complete municipal control of the local water supply.
Public control
The leader in the fight to end private control of the water supply was Fred Eaton. Eaton proposed that tax revenues would enable Los Angeles to provide water to its residents without charging them for the use of water directly. Eaton's views were especially powerful because of his distinguished record of achievement in both the private and public sector. During Eaton's nine-year term as the superintending engineer of the Los Angeles City Water Company, he headed a large expansion of the company's water system. Eaton left his position in 1886 when he was elected City Engineer. In his new public position, Eaton devoted his time to updating and expanding the sewer system. Eaton felt that the Los Angeles City Water Company was not serving the citizens of Los Angeles well because of high rates, and because the company frequently paid dividends to its stockholders instead of improving the water system. In early 1897, city engineers began creating plans for an updated water system while the city council informed the Los Angeles City Water Company that its lease would not be renewed beyond its expiration date, July 21, 1898. In early 1898, the city began talks with the Los Angeles City Water Company about taking over the company's current water system.