Judge axes federal suit over lake [View all]
A federal judge has thrown out a lawsuit filed by Los Angeles against air quality regulators who are requiring the city to do more to control dust on a lake that was siphoned dry a century ago to provide water for the booming metropolis.
U.S. District Judge Anthony W. Ishii granted a motion Wednesday to dismiss the lawsuit in the latest chapter in a decades-old spat over water rights in the arid region 200 miles north of Los Angeles. The lawsuit was filed last year in U.S. District Court in Fresno.
The conflict began in 1913, when Los Angeles began diverting water from Owens Lake, which then went dry in 1926. The lakebed has since been plagued with massive dust storms and poor air quality despite efforts by the city to keep dust down.
The scandal created by the diversion project was fodder for the 1974 film "Chinatown," and an aqueduct carrying away the water was dynamited repeatedly by angry residents after increased pumping in the 1920s combined with a drought ruined many farms.
http://news.yahoo.com/apnewsbreak-judge-axes-federal-suit-over-lake-234259095.html
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