The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) is the largest municipal utility in the United States with 8,100 megawatts of electric generating capacity (2021–2022) and delivering an average of 435 million gallons of water per day (487,000 acre-ft per year) to more than four million residents and local businesses in the City of Los Angeles and several adjacent cities and communities in southwestern Los Angeles County, California.
It was founded in 1902 to supply water to residents and businesses in the city of Los Angeles and several of its immediately adjacent communities. In 1917, LADWP began to deliver electricity to portions of the city. It has been involved in a number of controversies, including the 1928 St. Francis Dam failure, and written about in critical media portrayals such as those in the books Water and Power and Cadillac Desert.
History
The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power had six names changes since it was established in 1902.
Private operators
By the middle of the 19th century, Los Angeles's rapid population growth magnified problems with the city's water distribution system. At that time, a system of open, often polluted ditches, was supplying water for agricultural production but was not suited to provide water to homes. In 1853, the city council rejected as "excessive" a closed-pipe system that would serve homes directly. As a solution, the city allowed "water carriers with jugs and horse-drawn wagons…to serve the city's domestic [water] needs." By 1857 the council decided that the system needed to be updated, granting William G. Dryden franchise rights to provide homes with water through a system of underground water mains. The initial system served only a few homes using a network of wooden pipes. In December 1861, heavy rains destroyed the system and Dryden gave up his franchise. The city attempted contracting out water distribution rights to others, but none of the systems resulting from these contracts were successful.
The city's previous attempts to allow others to develop a water system on its behalf prompted the city council to relinquish its rights to the water in the Los Angeles River in 1868. The city of Los Angeles could no longer benefit from their municipal water distribution business. John S. Griffen, Solomon Lazard, and Prudent Beaudry, created the Los Angeles City Water Company, which violated many of the provisions of its lease on the Los Angeles River, including secretly tunneling under the river to extract 150 times as much water as the lease allowed. As the end of the lease drew near in the mid-1890s, popular support began to build for a return to complete municipal control of the local water supply.
Public control
Fred Eaton proposed that tax revenues would enable Los Angeles to provide water to its residents without charging them for the use of water directly. During Eaton's nine-year term as the superintending engineer of the Los Angeles City Water Company, he headed a large expansion of the company's water system. Eaton left his position in 1886 when he was elected City Engineer. In early 1897, city engineers created plans for an updated water system and the Los Angeles City Water Company's lease was not renewed beyond its expiration date, July 21, 1898. In early 1898, talks between the city and the Los Angeles City Water Company began to take over the company's current water system.
During negotiations it was decided that the current senior employees of the Los Angeles City Water Company would keep their jobs in order to ensure that the water system could continue to operate. It was not guaranteed that William Mulholland, who took over as superintending engineer after Eaton, would have a position working with the city-owned water system. Mulholland did not produce records the city officials requested during negotiations. It was discovered that neither the requested records nor a map of the water system existed. Mulholland, who was in charge of the non-existent records, claimed that he memorized all necessary information, including the size of every inch of pipe and the age and location of every valve. Mulholland secured a job with the city when he demonstrated his ability to recall the information. He then intervened with the company's principal stockholder, advising him to accept the city's offer of two million dollars for the system.
The LADWP has been a leading actor in the struggle over access to water from the Owens Valley, starting with its initial acquisition of water rights, as well as acquiring farms and governance of Mono Lake and Owens Lake.
Power delivery The Los Angeles Bureau of Power and Light was formed in 1911 to administer the electrical system in the city that supplied power generated by private companies. In 1922, it purchased Southern California Edison's distribution system within the city limits. In 1937, when the Bureau purchased the power system of the Los Angeles Gas and Electric Corporation, it became the dominant power supplier in the city. That year, the bureau merged with the Bureau of Water Works and Supply to become the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP). In 1939, LADWP became the sole electrical service provider for the city of Los Angeles.
The Bureau first offered municipal electricity in 1917 when their Power Plant No. 1, a hydroelectric power plant located in San Francisquito Canyon powered by the Los Angeles Aqueduct, began generating electricity. It ultimately produced 70.5 megawatts and is still in operation, producing enough electricity for 37,500 Los Angeles homes.
Three years later, in 1920, Power Plant No. 2 was added, but destroyed when the St. Francis Dam failed. However, the plant was completely rebuilt and back in service by November 1928. It remains in operation today, having the capacity to generate 18 megawatts.
On March 12, 1928, the St. Francis Dam, built and operated by the LADWP, collapsed catastrophically. The disaster was the second-greatest loss of life in California's history, after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire. The ensuing flood caused devastation to present-day Valencia, Newhall and the cities in the Santa Clara River Valley, taking the lives of some 425 people. The high death toll was due, in part, to confusion and mis-communication by and between employees of both the LADWP and Southern California Edison, who also had facilities and operations in the area. The confusion led to a lack of prompt warnings being sent to the downriver communities.Outland, Charles F. Man-Made Disaster: The Story of St Francis Dam. A.H. Clark Co. 1977 Those cities included Piru, Fillmore, Santa Paula, and San Buenaventura. Mulholland assumed full responsibility for the disaster and retired the following year.
The LADWP played a role in the development of Hoover Dam and bringing its energy to Los Angeles. The LADWP continued to operate the Hoover Dam electrical facility alongside Southern California Edison until 1987.
Modern history On January 17, 1994, the city of Los Angeles experienced its one and only total system black-out as a result of the Northridge earthquake. Much of the power was restored within a few hours.
In September 2005, a DWP worker accidentally cut power lines that caused over half of Los Angeles to be without power for one and one-half hours.
On October 10, 2011, the LADWP, along with the Community Redevelopment Agency of Los Angeles and the Los Angeles Cleantech Alliance, founded the LA Cleantech Incubator.
In October 2022, LADWP lost a lawsuit against the Great Basin Unified Air Pollution Control District for failure to control dust on Owens Lake near sensitive sacred tribal land claiming that they were not responsible for the pollution.
Criticism over excessive overtime and payroll cost The LADWP has been criticized for allowing excessive overtime. In 2018, 306 of its workers took home more than $100,000 in overtime pay, while the agency paid $250 million for overtime, a new high for the agency. The most egregious example of this is a security worker who was paid $314,000 in overtime, on a listed base pay of $25,000, along with three peers who were paid more than $200,000 overtime each. (The nationwide median wage for security officers was $28,500 in 2018.) One policy which enables these large overtime payouts is a provision in the union contracts which requires a normal shift worked after more than one hour of overtime to be paid at double time, with that overtime not based on working time more than 40 hours in a week but on working time beyond a "normal" shift.
A separate study found that LADWP's yearly payroll expense per customer was $490, significantly higher than the nationwide median for large utilities of $280 per customer.
Power system
In 2019–20, LADWP supplied more than 21,130 gigawatt hours (GWH) to more than 1.5 million residential and business customers, as well as about 5,200 in the Owens Valley.
The LADWP operates four natural gas-fired generating stations within city boundaries, which combined with other natural gas sources, account for 24% of capacity. While formerly receiving electricity from coal-fired plants in Utah and Arizona, it transitioned away from coal in 2025. A further 14% is generated using nuclear power, which is from the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station in Arizona. It receives about 2% of its electricity from hydropower, most coming from Hoover Dam and the rest coming from the Los Angeles Aqueduct system itself as the water descends from its mountain sources.
The LADWP, along with raw water deliveries and lake level management from the California Department of Water Resources, also operates the Castaic Power Plant as a pumped storage facility. Water flows from the upper reservoir to the lower during the day, generating power when demand is highest, and is pumped back up at night when excess capacity is available. About 1,600 megawatts, or 22% of the total capacity, is generated at this facility.
LADWP maintains a diverse and vertically integrated power generation, transmission and distribution system that spans five Western states, and delivers electricity to more than 4 million people in Los Angeles.
Electricity mix The Los Angeles City Council voted in 2004 to direct the LADWP to generate 20% of its energy (excluding Hoover Dam) from clean sources by 2010, a goal which was met and exceeded. The LADWP expected to achieve 25 percent renewables by 2016 and 33 percent by 2020, both which have been met and exceeded. As of 2020, "green power" renewable energy sources accounted for 37% of the LADWP's capacity, including the 120 MW Pine Tree Wind Farm, the largest municipally owned wind farm in the United States. LADWP is also investing in photovoltaic solar throughout the Southwest and geothermal sources in the Salton Sea area.
In March 2021, LADWP joined with Mayor Eric Garcetti, United States Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm, leading energy scientists, and local elected officials to announce the results of the Los Angeles 100% Renewable Energy Study ("LA100"). The study, which was conducted by renewable energy experts at the U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory, laid out a pathway for LADWP to achieve a 100% renewable energy grid as early as 2035 and by 2045 at the latest. The pathway includes significant deployment of renewable and zero-carbon energy by 2035, including wind and solar resources accounting for 69% to 87% of generated power.