Commentary: DWP’s new leader wants to shake things up. It won’t be easy
An honest-to-goodness map of the American West would show L.A.’s tentacles everywhere. You’d see canals — the Los Angeles Aqueduct, running along the base of the Sierra Nevada, carrying water from the Owens River; the State Water Project, meandering through the San Joaquin Valley, supplying many Southern California cities and farms; and the Colorado River Aqueduct, cutting through the desert on its mission to deliver water from desert to coast. You’d see electric lines too — a sprawling network of wires that over the decades have furnished Angelenos with power from coal plants in Nevada, Utah and Montana; from nuclear reactors in Arizona; and from hydropower dams in the Pacific Northwest. Los Angeles has reshaped the West. And the city’s Department of Water and Power has been the agent of change. Last month, Janisse Quiñones took the helm as the agency’s new leader, after being recommended by L.A. Mayor Karen Bass and confirmed unanimously by City Council.
-Written by Sammy Roth, climate columnist for the LA Times.