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Mulholland enjoyed a reputation as a working stiff who could get big things done (Taylor, 1982).
He possessed a charisma unusual for an engineer, and his down-and-dirty working man perspective
made him popular with construction workers, as well as water and power employees. At the zenith
of his career he was the highest paid public official in California (Kahrl, et al, 1979). The
personification of a field general, Mulholland he surrounded himself with talented engineers. The
men he hired, such as Harvey Van Norman, W. W. Hurlbut, Edward Bayley, Charles Lee, and
Ralph Proctor, were men not unlike himself: hard-working, to a large degree self-educated, and
exhibiting a willingness to work under difficult field conditions.

THE LOS ANGELES AQUEDUCT

After record-setting floods in the 1880s, drought conditions persisted in Los Angeles during the
1890s. The city’s expanding population created an untenable situation for supplying sufficient
water, especially for fire protection. In 1898 the Los Angeles City Water Company lost its
franchise as the sole provider to the City of Los Angeles (Nadeau, 1993). The company was
acquired by the City in February 1902, and after the series of interviews described earlier, William
Mulholland was appointed Superintendent of Water Works. During his first three years he was
given ample opportunity to demonstrate his skills and abilities as a water resources manager by
rebuilding the City's outdated distribution network, cutting the water rates for domestic service in
half, and turning a hefty profit of $640,000.
During its first year of municipal ownership a water audit revealed that Los Angeles citizens
had consumed as much as to 26 million gallons per day (gpd). Mulholland began installing water
meters to reduce consumption and increase operating profits, and the per capita usage was reduced
to 200 gpd, which was considered an acceptable figure. But, it was a losing battle because of Los
Angeles' increasing population. In 1899, while Fred Eaton was mayor, the City surpassed the
100,000 mark in population (reaching 102,479 in 1900). By 1904 that number had swelled to
175,000. To those charged with providing water, it was becoming apparent that the Los Angeles
basin was incapable of supporting more than about 200,000 people with the water resources
available from all sources within the Los Angeles River's watershed (by 1910 the City’s population
had increased three-fold in a single decade, to 319,198 people).
Mulholland’s frustrations began to swell with the drought of 1904, when only 8.74 inches of
rain fell on Los Angeles, about half of normal. Having exhausted the underground aquifers within
the Los Angeles River watershed, he soon found himself enveloped in the political swirl of a full-
blown water crisis. His water dilemma had been predicted by his mentor at the Los Angeles City
Water Company, former City Engineer and Mayor Fred Eaton (Fig. 2). Mulholland had succeeded
Eaton as Superintendent of the water company when Eaton became the L.A. City Surveyor and
Engineer in December 1885. Eaton was re-elected to a second one-year term in December 1886,
and again in 1889-90. During the drought of 1893-94, Los Angeles only recorded 6.7 inches of rain.
As an adjunct activity of his City Engineer duties, Eaton had undertaken a search for alternative
sources of water in the Sierra Nevada Mountains as far north as the Kings River, and east to the
Colorado River (Nadeau, 1993). In 1892 or '93 Eaton scouted the Owens Valley as a water source
and informed Mulholland of its favorable potential as a water source for Los Angeles. At that time

the two disagreed as to whether an out-of-area water source would be necessary to meet demands
during drought years.
Born in the Pueblo of Los Angeles in 1855, Eaton understood the bitter effects of extended
droughts in the Los Angeles Basin better than all of the transplanted folks. Two out of every three

World Environmental and Water Resources Congress 2017