Owens Lakebed ( Dry) Alexa Horochowski, 2019

In 1913, the water that fed Owens Lake in the Owens Valley of the eastern Sierra Nevada, Inyo County, California, was diverted to Los Angeles by Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. By 1926 the lake was desiccated and would eventually become the largest source of dust pollution in the United States. Though the dust has been mostly mitigated through irrigation, managed vegetation, gravel, brine pools, and other techniques, in 2017 a particular rainy season put at risk the costly infrastructure of LADWPs dust mitigation project. In an effort to avoid a catastrophic event LADWP temporarily deployed hundreds of 2000pound sandbags along miles of road.