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Nov. 5, 1913: The city of Los Angeles formally opens its Owens Valley Aqueduct. The water supply helps trigger the enormous growth of Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley. William Mulholland, the larger-than-life czar of L.A.'s water supply, says of the water, "There it is. Take it." Within 13 years, the Owens River is reduced to a trickle, and Owens Lake becomes an alkaline mud flat.

 

Nov. 5, 1966: In the shadows of the old steel mills in Gary, Ind., and less than an hour's drive from Chicago, the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore (at right) is created.

 

Nov. 5, 2000: David R. Brower, the cantankerous former head of the Sierra Club and founder of both Friends of the Earth and the Earth Island Institute, dies in Northern California at age 88. Brower once said, "We either solve the environmental problem, or the Earth dies."

 

Nov. 5, 2004: Russia ratifies the Kyoto Accords, putting the climate treaty into effect despite the absence of the U.S.

 

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

 

This feature is compiled by Peter Dykstra, an MNN contributor and publisher of Environmental Health News and The Daily Climate.