Revealed: These rural California airports need critical repairs. Los Angeles stands in their way

‘We have a landlord that is stonewalling us,’ one former Inyo county official says of LA, which has long owned large swaths of the Owens valley

Katie Licari in the Owens valley
Tue 4 Jun 2024 07.00 EDT

This article is reported by AfroLA and co-published by AfroLA, Guardian US and Inyo county’s the Sheet. It’s the second of several stories examining the impact of Los Angeles’s extensive landownership in the Owens valley. You can read the first one here.

Two rural California airports that are crucial to local air ambulance services, firefighting efforts and search and rescue operations are unable to perform critical repairs, blocked by an agency 300 miles away: the city of Los Angeles.

The airports are two of several major pieces of infrastructure in California’s Owens valley left in disrepair because of LA policies, an investigation by AfroLA, the Sheet and the Guardian reveals.

Los Angeles has owned large swathes of Inyo county, where the Owens valley is located, for more than a century. With ownership of the land comes rights to its water – water that is key to servicing the thirsty metropolis of 3.8 million people. Aqueducts carrying water from Inyo and neighbouring Mono county to LA provided 73% of the city’s water supply last year.

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