Residents of Los Angeles have been drinking water from the Owens River since 1913 when the city’s water department engineers completed the original 233-mile aqueduct. That aqueduct, the longest municipal aqueduct in the world, intercepts Owens River water as it flows into saline Owens Lake, bringing snow-melt from the western slope of the Sierra Nevadas to Los Angeles. A 105-mile extension of the aqueduct in 1940 and construction of a second Owens River Aqueduct in 1970 kept pace with the city’s growing demand for water.