KCRW’s Madeleine Brand sat down with Benett Kessler, a resident of Independence, California and owner and founder of Sierra Wave Media. She says that the DWP is still the major player in the Owens River Valley. “They virtually still continue to own all the business houses on Main Street and land under public facilities, churches, little league fields, that sort of thing,” she says. And, as she explains, the relationship between the people of the Ownes Valley and the DWP is, at it’s core, an unethical one. “The dynamic that we see here is really that of a colony. You see the mother country of Los Angeles with its dominant control, the Tories are the board of supervisors who are very reluctant to come up against DWP because of potential consequences, ” she says.
This post has been updated to reflect that Benett Kessler is the owner and founder of Sierra Wave Media.