Talking Water
Talking Water is an offering by Walking Water ...
Walking Water, born from a vision received in Payahuunadü - "the place where the water flows" on the ancestral homelands of the Paiute-Shoshone people - is a project and a prayer that centers water as teacher, guide, and sacred source.
We began as a three-year pilgrimage along the natural and human-made waterways between Mono Lake and Los Angeles, CA, partnering with local and global communities to collectively bear witness to the situation of water in our world. Following the path of water from source to end-user, we witnessed histories and current realities of destruction, violence, harm and extraction. Alongside the stories of grief, we celebrated those of beauty and resilience - possibilities for the healing and regeneration of waters, landscapes, and communities.
We continue to listen to the guidance and orientation of water, for how Walking Water might serve as one tributary within a global and intergenerational movement to restore relations with waters, lands and peoples. We move with the question: what world is possible if human beings devote themselves - personally, politically, spiritually - to that which gives life? We understand how essential it is for us to recognize and honor the leadership of Indigenous peoples and communities of color who have been protecting the waters and the lands from extraction and exploitation for hundreds of years -whose life ways, languages and cultures offer profound teachings for how to grow into right relationship.
A commitment to healing waters asks each of us to find our role in movements that struggle to dismantle oppressive systems that commodify waters, lands and peoples in pursuit of power and profit. And as we carry the dream of justice for waters and peoples alike, we strive to uplift and support those individuals and communities who are "acupuncture points" of healing and possibility, actively living towards that more beautiful and liberated world.
For more info go to: https://walking-water.org
To support the work of Walking Water go to: https://walking-water.org/donate/
Walking Water is a fiscally sponsored project of Weaving Earth
Banner photo by Teena Pugliese
Talking Water
Water Learning Series: Los Angeles - Session Seven with LA Dept. of Water and Power & Met. Water District of S. CA
“Agencies like MWD and DWP are really working on our transparency and trying to bring in different voices into our processes… I think it’s important as we need to build trust in what we’re doing and the investments we need to make locally. I do think holding us accountable and demanding transparency is going to help us move forward.” –Liz Crosson, Sustainability, Resilience and Innovation Officer, Metropolitan Water District
Welcome to the year-long Water Learning Series: Los Angeles. Throughout 2024, we are hosting 11 conversations with organizations, community projects, tribal organizations, activists, organizers, and leaders from LA and places impacted by LA’s water story.
We are joined in Session Seven by two of the most significant and powerful institutions in Los Angeles’s water story: Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) and Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (MWD). Our guests, David Pettijohn, Director of Water Resources at LADWP and Liz Crosson, Sustainability, Resilience and Innovation Officer at MWD, offer a comprehensive and historical look at how these agencies became foundational in the growth and development of Southern California and remain central in the importation of LA’s water from hundreds of miles away. They share background about the LADWP constructing the Los Angeles Aqueduct at the turn of the 20th century to import water from Owen’s Valley/Payahuunadü and the formation of Metropolitan Water District of Southern California in 1940 to further supplement water sources through constructing the Colorado River Aqueduct and the California State Water Project which imports water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.
The guests also discuss forward-looking initiatives responding to climate change. Both LADWP and MWD are diversifying their water supplies to decrease dependency on the aqueduct system which is being severely impacted by droughts and other climate-related conditions. David, from LADWP, talks about long-range programs in the City of Los Angeles to develop local water sources through groundwater clean-up and recharge, stormwater capture, conservation, recycling water, and water efficiency programs that incentivize homeowners to install water saving devices. Liz, from MWD, discusses the necessities of building trust, accountability, and collaboration with the communities in the 26 municipalities that MWD serves as a way of investing in the future. The conversation also includes a discussion about Owen’s Valley/Payahuunadü. Adam Perez, the LADWP Deputy Manager of the Aqueduct for the Water Operations Division, joins the conversation talking about LADWP’s commitments to working with the tribes in Owens Valley, environmental restoration projects, and ensuring that residents in Owen’s Valley/Payahuunadü have their needs met before the water is exported to Los Angeles.
Hosted by: Kate Bunney
Produced & Edited by: Anne Carol Mitchell
Intro music by: Mamuse 'River Run Free' - featuring Walter Strauss
If you feel inspired by Talking Water please consider a donation - our work relies on the community. You can donate here. https://walking-water.org/donate/
For more info go to Walking Water website. https://walking-water.org/
