“holding the present in place requires continuous work, a sisyphean expenditure of materials and labor for an infrastructure that only ever becomes present when it breaks down or needs repair. it takes more and more to make sure nothing happens.” (Zee 227)

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as Los Angeles exploded in size in the early 20th century, so did its thirst. the LA aqueduct waters the city, carrying precious liquid over more than 200 miles of desert from the Owens Valley (Stringfellow). the city of Los Angeles purchased land from farmers and ranchers in the valley under misleading contracts; and even for those who didn’t sell, growing there became more and more difficult as the region’s groundwater levels were further reduced by the faraway city. by 1926 the Owens Lake had disappeared, marking the beginning of desertification and periodic dust storms.

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LA raised the political and financial capital for the aqueduct project by appealing to the simple, powerful desire for stasis, for the kind of stable, resource-rich environment that allows for the growth of metropolises. the land underneath LA is not that kind of land (in fact, that kind of land may not exist at all). the ongoing expensive and labor of building and maintaining the aqueduct is an attempt to slow down change, to offset ecological collapse to other locations and to future times. at the heart of its story is a ‘chronopolitical’ conflict, as LA’s slow motion change (which, at the timescale of the individual, looks a lot like stasis) comes at the price of rapid, devastating ecological collapse in the Owens Valley, the “sacrificial twin of the city” (Christensen 56).