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51-842: When it was founded, Alectra was described as the second largest municipally-owned electricity utility in North America after the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power . As of January 2019 it is the largest municipally-owned electricity utility in Canada, by number of customers served. Alectra was formed on January 31, 2017 by the merger of the municipally-owned utilities Enersource (serving Mississauga ), Horizon Utilities (serving Hamilton and St. Catharines ), and PowerStream which served Aurora, Alliston, Barrie, Beeton, Bradford West Gwillimbury, Penetanguishene, Markham, Richmond Hill, Thornton, Tottenham and Vaughan. The initial formation of

102-660: 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

153-526: A "masterpiece" and saying that it is "compelling today as it was on publication in 1986". It praised the research that went into work, calling out the interviews performed by Reisner to produce the book. Summit Daily News has also praised Reisner's research and called out Reisner's framing of the Bureau of Reclamation as the "clear villain" and the Colorado River as its "most abused victim", ultimately calling

204-466: 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 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

255-573: A lot more are going." In 1986, Cadillac Desert was a finalist for both the National Book Critics' Circle Award and the Bay Area Book Reviewers' Award (BABRA). In 1999, a Modern Library panel of authors and critics ranked it 61st on a list of the 100 most notable English-language works of nonfiction of the 20th century. The Property and Environment Research Center reviewed the book 25 years after first publication, calling it

306-443: 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

357-618: A raid by the Federal Bureau of Investigation of LADWP Headquarters. Wright was then investigated and sentenced to 72 months in federal prison for accepting bribes from a lawyer to ensure the approval of a three-year $ 30 million no-bid contract. LADWP veteran Martin L. Adams was confirmed by City Council as General Manager on September 13, 2019. LADWP is headquartered in a Corporate- International Style building designed by A.C. Martin & Associates and completed in May 1965. The 17-story building

408-452: A thriller set in the near-future. Several characters refer to Cadillac Desert as having anticipated the environmental decline they are living through. The physical book also plays an important role. Claire Vaye Watkins refers to Cadillac Desert as a source in her acknowledgments for her novel, Gold Fame Citrus (2015). This water supply –related article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . This article about

459-596: 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, as well as that overtime is not based on working 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. 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

510-488: 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. The Los Angeles City Council voted in 2004 to direct

561-626: Is overseen by the five-member Los Angeles Board of Water and Power Commissioners, who are appointed by the Mayor of Los Angeles and confirmed by the Los Angeles City Council for five-year terms. The board sets policy for the Department of Water and Power and votes on utility rates, renewable energy projects, and pension tiers for LADWP employees. The Board meets regularly on the second and fourth Tuesday of each month at 10:00 a.m. Currently,

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612-673: The Brown Act . On May 26, 2023, Cynthia Ruiz, the first Native American to serve on the Los Angeles Board of Water and Power Commissioners was informed by the deputy mayor that she was being removed as a commissioner less than one year into her four-year term, which was confirmed that day by an email from Mayor Karen Bass , whose decision it was. George McGraw was sworn in as a commissioner on June 20, replacing Ruiz. The general manager, senior assistant general managers, chief financial officer, and managing senior assistant city attorney (under

663-501: The Intermountain Power Plant to run on natural gas. Most of the power lines in Los Angeles were built above-ground before it became customary to run power lines below-ground. Starting in 2007, LADWP has a long-term project to upgrade the overhead power lines and convert them to underground. This difficult conversion has been slowed by budget constraints, the impact on traffic, the pursuit of other modernization projects, and

714-664: The Los Angeles City Attorney ) manage operations. On January 31, 2014, Ron Nichols resigned as chief of the LADWP amid ongoing controversies regarding the LADWP. On February 21, 2014, Marcie L. Edwards was unanimously confirmed by the Los Angeles City Council on February 21, 2014. She is the first woman to lead the LADWP. At the time of her nomination, Edwards was Anaheim 's City Manager. Prior to her appointment as Anaheim's City Manager, Edwards served as chief of Anaheim Public Utilities for 13 years. Edwards previously worked at

765-523: The Owens Valley , starting with its initial acquisition of water rights , as well as acquiring farms and governance of Mono Lake and Owens Lake . 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. On October 10, 2011, the LADWP, along with

816-520: The Pacific AC Intertie 's two 500 kV lines terminating in Los Angeles are included) is presently technically infeasible. Upgrading the overhead lines is expected to take 10 to 15 years. The upgrading of LADWP's overhead power lines consists of eliminating the V-shape brackets on the power poles that are holding up the crossarm and replacing them with cross-brackets that are put on the crossarm. Some of

867-587: The Power Workers' Union , the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers , and Unifor . Following a vote on June 28, 2017 the majority of unionized employees of Alectra and its subsidiaries agreed to be represented solely by the Power Workers' Union. Los Angeles Department of Water and Power The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power ( LADWP ) is the largest municipal utility in

918-592: 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

969-594: The western United States . The book largely focuses on the history of two federal agencies, the Bureau of Reclamation and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers , and their struggles to remake the American West in ways to satisfy national settlement and energy generation goals. The book concludes that the development-driven policies, formed when settling the West was the country's main concern, have had serious long-term negative effects on

1020-521: The Board is observing physical distancing measures in accordance with California Governor Gavin Newsom 's order for COVID-19 prevention. Regular meeting agendas are available to the public at least 72 hours before the Board meets. The agenda for meetings contains a brief general description of the items to be considered. The Board may consider an item not on the agenda only in limited circumstances consistent with

1071-817: 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. 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

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1122-429: 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. Those cities included Piru, Fillmore , Santa Paula , and San Buenaventura . Mulholland assumed full responsibility for the disaster and retired the following year. The LADWP has been a leading actor in the struggle over access to water from

1173-472: The LADWP for 24 years, starting at the age of 19 as a clerk typist. In August 2016, Marcie L. Edwards announced her retirement. On August 16, 2016, the Los Angeles Board of Water and Power Commissioners appointed David H. Wright Interim General Manager, and requested the City Council to confirm his appointment as permanent General Manager. Wright remained General Manager until 2019, when he resigned following

1224-431: 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

1275-628: 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. Fred Eaton proposed that tax revenues would enable Los Angeles to provide water to its residents without charging them for

1326-741: The Mono and Owens basins is causing the LADWP to look into a number of new water sources, including a new direct connection to the California Aqueduct , increased use of recycled water, use of stormwater capture and reuse, and increased conservation. Many of the old pipelines are beginning to wear out, or are at capacity and insufficient to handle future demand. LADWP has undertaken pipeline replacement projects on many L.A. boulevards like Exposition and Olympic . In addition to Los Angeles, LADWP provides services to parts of: Over its service territory, LADWP serves four million residents and businesses. LADWP

1377-753: 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. It receives 21% of its electricity from coal-fired plants in Utah and Arizona , but plans to transition away from coal by 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

1428-530: 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

1479-517: 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

1530-401: 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

1581-664: The book "prophetic." A portion of the 1993 update was printed in the 1994 inaugural edition of the Hastings West-Northwest Journal of Environmental Law and Policy . A four-part television documentary based on the revised book was produced in 1996 by KTEH , the PBS affiliate in San Jose, California . This book has been referred to in 21st-century fiction about the effects of climate change (so-called climate fiction ), such as Paolo Bacigalupi's The Water Knife (2015),

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1632-455: The capacity to generate 18 megawatts. 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 March 12, 1928,

1683-415: 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

1734-603: 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,

1785-437: 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 and media portrayals over the years, including the 1928 St. Francis Dam failure and the books Water and Power and Cadillac Desert . By the middle of the 19th century, Los Angeles's rapid population growth magnified problems with

1836-436: 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

1887-525: The company was completed with the acquisition of Hydro One Brampton from the provincial government's Hydro One on February 28, 2017. Guelph Hydro (serving Guelph and Rockwood ) merged into Alectra on January 1, 2019. Following its formation, Alectra continued to hold the 50% ownership stake formerly held by PowerStream in Collus PowerStream (which services Collingwood and surrounding area) until 2017. Alectra announced on November 9, 2017 that it

1938-421: 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

1989-550: The environment and water quantity. The book was revised and updated in 1993, with a new Afterword by the author. The book was again reissued in 2017, with a lengthy Postscript by Lawrie Mott, a former staff scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council . In a review written shortly after publication, The New York Times described the book as "a revealing, absorbing, often amusing and alarming report on where billions of their dollars have gone - and where

2040-712: The environmental issues associated with oil-type cable. The 315 megawatt capacity Scattergood Steam Plant (Unit 3) to West Los Angeles (Receiving Station K, "Olympic") 230 kV line is having to be replaced after only 45 years of operations, due to multiple failures within this rather long single-circuit, oil-filled, "pipe type" cable. The LADWP provided about 159 billion gallons (602 million cubic meters) of water in 2019, to 735,600 water service connections, pumping it through 7,340 miles (11,813 km) of pipe . In fiscal years 2016–2020: The use of water from specific sources can vary greatly from year to year. The prospect of increased demand coupled with reduced supply from

2091-506: The largest component of the power supply was renewable energy at about 37%. The second-largest component was natural gas, at about 24%. Coal-fired power made up a further 21%. By contrast, the California investor-owned utilities SCE, PG&E, and SDG&E, had all eliminated their use of coal. In 2013, LADWP announced it would become coal-free by 2025 by divesting its 21% stake in Navajo Generating Station in 2016 and converting

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2142-572: The largest storm restoration company in Eastern Canada. The company is governed by a 14-member board of directors representing the municipalities and other shareholders which owned its predecessor companies. Municipal representatives make up 13 of those directors, consisting of: 4 directors from Mississauga , 3 from Vaughan , 2 from Hamilton , 2 from Markham , 1 from Barrie , 1 from St. Catharines , and 1 from Guelph . Employees of Alectra's predecessor companies had previously been represented by

2193-487: The late Los Angeles City Councilman John Ferraro . The building was featured extensively in the 2010 science fiction thriller film Inception . Unusually for a municipal public utility , LADWP has been mentioned several times in popular culture, both fiction and nonfiction: Notes Cadillac Desert Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water is a 1986 American history book by Marc Reisner about land development and water policy in

2244-423: The lingering effects of a workforce reduction over the last decade. Budget issues are particularly acute in the department's transmission system, where underground transmission costs about 10 to 14 times the cost of overhead transmission, per unit length, and the technical and environmental challenges which confront such installations. Additionally, undergrounding of the three 500 kV transmission lines (five lines, if

2295-526: 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

2346-469: 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

2397-463: 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 be renewed beyond its expiration date, July 21, 1898. In early 1898, talks between

2448-574: The wooden power poles are being replaced with metal poles. Also included in the upgrade of overhead power lines, are the upgrades of the insulators for the lower voltage distribution power lines, which are more modern than the old-fashioned ceramic insulators. The new modern insulators for lower voltage distribution lines look identical to Southern California Edison's distribution insulators. The department recently completed two 230 kV underground projects using an innovative cable technology which does not utilize oil as an insulator. The oilless cable mitigates

2499-416: 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. As of 2020,

2550-463: Was constructed on Bunker Hill with the purpose of consolidating 11 building offices scattered across Downtown Los Angeles and housing LADWP's 3,200 employees. On September 21, 2012, it was designated as a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument . The General Office Building of the Los Angeles Department of Water & Power was renamed the John Ferraro Building on November 16, 2000, after

2601-1315: Was selling its ownership stake in Collus PowerStream back to the Town of Collingwood, with the Town announcing that it was selling Collus PowerStream to EPCOR Utilities . On January 5th, 2021, Alectra acquired power restoration company Holland Power Services based in Maugerville, New Brunswick . Holland Power Services operates throughout the east coast of Canada and the United States and has 5 locations: 1 in New Brunswick (headquarters), 2 in Ontario, 1 in Quebec , and 1 in Maine, USA. On June 10th, 2024, Alectra announced their acquisition of another power restoration company, Gagnon Line Construction, based in Grand Falls/Grand Sault, New Brunswick . Gagnon Line Construction has two locations: 1 in New Brunswick, and 1 in Quebec. The acquisition of both Holland Power Services and Gagnon Line Construction makes Alectra

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