Metropolitan Water District of Southern California

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The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California is the largest bulk water supplier for municipal use in the world. The name is usually shortened to the "Metropolitan Water District" or simply "MWD". It is a consortium of 26 cities and water districts and indirectly provides water to 24 million people in its 5,200 square mile service area. It was created by an act of the California Legislature in 1928, primarily to manage water from the Colorado River, and currently also manages water flowing from the California Aqueduct as well as other water sources.

It includes parts of Los Angeles, Orange, San Diego, Riverside, San Bernardino and Ventura counties. The district covers primarily the coastal and most heavily populated portions of Southern California, and large portions of San Diego, San Bernardino and Riverside Counties are located outside its service area. This six-county service area as of 2003 had the eighth largest Gross Domestic Product in the world, behind Italy but ahead of Canada.

The main headquarters is located at 700 North Alameda Street in downtown Los Angeles, adjacent to Union Station.

1 History
2 About the Seal
3 Members
4 See also
5 External links

[edit] History

After its formation in 1928, Metropolitan built the Colorado River Aqueduct to bring water from Parker Dam on the Colorado river to Metropolitan's service area. Metropolitan began water deliveries in 1941.

On December 16, 1952, the Board of Directors of Metropolitan issued the Laguna Declaration:

The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California is prepared, with its existing governmental powers and its present and projected distribution facilities, to provide its service area with adequate supplies of water to meet expanding and increasing needs in the years ahead. The District is now providing its service area with a supplemental water supply from the Colorado River. When and as additional water resources are required to meet increasing needs for domestic, industrial and municipal water, The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California will be prepared to deliver such supplies.
Tax payers and water users residing within The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California already have obligated themselves for the construction of an aqueduct supply and distribution system... This system has been designed and constructed in a manner that permits orderly and economic extensions and enlargements to deliver the District’s full share of Colorado River water as well as water from other sources as required in the years ahead. Establishment of overlapping and paralleling governmental authorities and water distribution facilities to service Southern California areas would place a wasteful and unnecessary financial burden upon all of the people of California, and particularly the residents of Southern California.

[edit] About the Seal

It appears on paperweights, resolutions, district vehicles, stickers and all variety of Metropolitan memorabilia. It has been seen by more people than the Colorado River Aqueduct.

It's the Metropolitan Water District seal. Acknowledged by the district as "one of the most ornate seals in California," it is one of the best-known and least-documented aspects of Metropolitan's history.

In recent years, the Metropolitan logo has become more widely used in certain media—such as press releases, agendas and official reports. But in terms of a surviving remnant from Metropolitan's early days, the seal is arguably the single visual element that unites Metropolitan's diverse, far-flung constituency.

Yet despite its high profile, the history of the seal has sometimes been shrouded in obscurity. It isn't mentioned in the first annual report and history of the Metropolitan Water District. Aqueduct News, which began printing in 1934, apparently never wrote about the seal.

The official board minutes include the seal's adoption and design (as well as the adoption of a previous seal three years earlier). But huge questions remain. Who really designed the seal? Why did the designers include the elements they did—and did they ever put those reasons to paper? A search for Metropolitan's Betsy Ross reveals a web of oral histories that go around in circles, almost like an urban myth.

One of the few written explanations of the seal is contained in a 1999 brochure.

Here is an excerpt: "At the top of the circle the California bear eyes the state flower, the California poppy. Directly below the bear is an eagle with its wings spread. The eagle represents a strong patriarchal, but benevolent government. To the left of the eagle is the figure of a construction worker on the Colorado River Aqueduct standing behind a surveyor's transit. Desert plants encountered along the route flank the workers. To the right of the eagle stands a factory worker, holding a hammer, a tool of industry. A gear symbolizing the wheels of industry being turned by water and the flowering plants that would be found in cities surround the worker…Flowing abundantly from the tunnel (portal) is water, the gift that brought life to Southern California. A laurel garland lies below the stream of water and represents peace and tranquillity. At the base of the seal are 13 links representing…the 13 cities that joined together to form the Metropolitan Water District."

One can quibble with that description. Technically, there were 11 cities that joined together to form MWD in 1928, the year mentioned on the seal. The 13 links actually refer to the number of member agencies when the seal was adopted in 1933. Also, it's not entirely clear that the MWD went around calling itself "patriarchal but benevolent."

Tracked down halfway across the country, former External Affairs intern Kamron Barron indicates that she obtained the information for the seal from now-retired MWD artist Will Burlingame.

"I know that the information was around," Will says later. "I don't remember where I saw it or where it originally came from."

Many MWD veterans cited the late inspection trip tour manager Tom Lovil as a source, including Mike Young, who started with MWD in 1961 and retired as assistant chief of operations.

"Lovil figured out what all the elements were," Mike says. "He figured out key elements in the seal…I remember talking to him many times about it."

Since no one "as I remember, wrote down what the elements were, it's a pretty good explanation."

Met retiree Al Whitsett says that discussion of the seal went back far earlier. When he went to work at Met in the 1950s, he remembers the 1930s generation talking about the seal over coffee.

Waxing eloquent, unofficial MWD historian Allan Preston says that symbolism was very important in those days, and that there was symbolism in every element in the seal, even with the filigree around the circumference of the seal and the choice of colors.

He says that the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power seal was highly identifiable, and that the MWD seal was "a very early attempt in trying to establish an identity." The Owens Valley aqueduct had been a city of Los Angeles project, and MWD was trying to establish the concept of a consortium.

When asked if he has any detailed historical records on the seal's origins, Allan more or less says that if anybody finds out anything, to please let him know. It's at that point that the magnitude of the search becomes apparent. If Allan didn't know, then who would?

Given the fuzzy oral history, what do the written records say?

Among the more interesting facts is that the "old" seal adopted in 1933 was not the first seal.

The district was barely seven months old when the board first took up the matter of the seal in 1929, then deferred action until April 1930.

Among the designs considered for the 1930 seal was a depiction of the Colorado River under storm clouds. Another apparent idea for a 1930 design was a circle divided into four parts. One contained a California bear and poppy, and a second section included a Roman-style aqueduct and 11 stars (for the 11 agencies that comprised Metropolitan at the time). A third section included a desert cactus, and a fourth included a palm tree.

What the board ultimately adopted in 1930 had a palm tree in the foreground, 11 stars on the bottom, a dam on the right and an aqueduct that stretches left through mountains. The aqueduct ends with an open pipe creating a big puddle next to an urban area on the left.

But once it was adopted, the palm tree logo seems to disappear into the mists of history. Drawings sit mostly unnoticed in a drawer in an External Affairs cubicle (where they might have remained unnoticed if not for a tip from Will Burlingame). A stamp used to emboss the palm tree seal on official documents was discovered hiding in plain sight as Dawn Chin took a visitor through the 12th floor board archives.

http://www.mwdh2o.com/mwdh2o/pages/about/seal.html