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World Environmental and Water Resources Congress 2017 401

The initial goal was to secure sufficient water to supply 390,000 inhabitants with an average
per capita consumption of 150 gpd, requiring 58 million gallons per day (gpd). Though not nearly
the capacity of New York's new Croton Aqueduct (capable of 340 million gpd), an aqueduct 233
miles long was without precedent. The longest of the numerous Roman aqueducts, at Marcia, had a
length of just 58.4 miles.

Mulholland was a prodigious reader of the technical literature, and was very involved in the
activities and publications of the American Waterworks Association (AWWA). In 1885-93 New
York had succeeded in constructing a new Croton Aqueduct, which employed a near-continuous
pressure tunnel, the first ever completed. Their aqueduct was 45 miles in length and used a sag pipe
seven miles long and up to 420 feet deep to pass beneath the Harlem River. Massive steel sag pipes,
steam-powered shovels, and gasoline powered tractors were recent technological triumphs that
would allow for an Owens River aqueduct to become reality.

Figure 3. The independent Board of Engineers appointed to review Mulholland’s scheme
for the Los Angeles Aqueduct in the Owens Valley in 1906. From left, John R. Freeman,
James D. Schuyler, Joseph P. Lippincott, Frederick P. Stearns, and William Mulholland.

Mulholland's earliest hurdles were securing the trust of the City's political base, then from
bond measures passed by the electorate in June 1907. The enormity of the undertaking drew
skeptics from the outset. Engineers, newspaper editors, and electric power interests pointed out the
unprecedented scale of the project and Mulholland's lack of experience with such facilities, which
were infinitely more complex than an ad hoc systems of buried pipes and some shallow wells in the
Los Angeles River. These critics argued that the project was a desperate gamble, and that its failure
could place the city in receivership.
Seeking to diminish as much criticism as possible prior to the $24 million bond election, the

Water Commissioners appointed an Aqueduct Advisory Board, comprised of three nationally-
known civil engineers: John R. Freeman, James D. Schuyler and Frederick P. Stearns (Fig. 3). They
made an independent evaluation of the proposed aqueduct. The board reviewed the project's design
feasibility, constructability, pricing and logistic requirements. The Board found the aqueduct

World Environmental and Water Resources Congress 2017