The powerful Los Angeles Department of Water and Power sued air regulators Friday over demands to control dust from Owens Lake nearly a century after the exploding metropolis siphoned water to quench its growing thirst. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Fresno, marks the latest salvo in a bitter back-and-forth over water rights in the arid region that was set in motion in 1913, when Los Angeles began diverting water from the lake 200 miles to its north. The lake went dry in 1926 and has since been plagued with massive dust storms and poor air quality.  The scandal created by the diversion project was fodder for the 1974 film “Chinatown,” and hard feelings persist in rural Owens Valley, where many locals see the utility as a parasitic neighbor. The aqueduct was dynamited repeatedly after increased pumping in the 1920s combined with a drought to ruin many local farms. Since a 1998 agreement, Los Angeles has spent $1.2 billion to tamp down the dust there as part of the nation’s largest dust mitigation project, mainly by putting water back into a 40-square-mile area of the lakebed. The utility is currently working to control dust in another 2-square-mile parcel. But recent orders from the Great Basin Unified Air Pollution Control District to increase the dust mitigation area by 3 square miles are excessive and wasteful, the lawsuit alleges. The utility does not believe dust from the area in question was caused by its century-old actions and says it is not responsible.

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