OWENS APOLOGY JUST DOESN'T HOLD WATER.

Byline: RALPH E. SHAFFER Local View

DRAGGED kicking and screaming into a settlement that city officials fought every step of the way, Los Angeles bowed to the inevitable this week when water finally returned to the lower Owens River. The water never should have left its banks nearly a century ago, but Southern California's thirst for growth turned much of Owens Valley into a wasteland.

Presiding over the ceremony near Independence commemorating the re-watering of the river, L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa inadvertently but correctly characterized the region as the ``Sahara'' (according to his written remarks, he meant to say ``Eastern Sierra'').

It's an understandable mistake.

For more than a century, city boosters have frightened us with the d-words -- drought and desert. Southern Californians have become brainwashed by the myth that became for most of us a fact; we truly believe Los Angeles is built on a desert. Like Villaraigosa, we're so imbued with the drought/desert fabrication that the word ``Sahara'' readily comes to mind.

At Independence, Villaraigosa indirectly apologized for the city's century of arrogance. He admitted that in the past Los Angeles officials had made promises to Owens Valley residents that were not kept.

His implication? This time the city would do the right thing.

We've heard that before, and from municipal officials whose progressive and environmental credentials were even more impeccable than Villaraigosa's.

Back in the 1920s, Clarence Dykstra, renowned expert in urban administration, and John R. Haynes, whose name today is borne by the city's most important civic research foundation, led what is now the Department of Water and Power. They genuinely sought to undo much of the ill will created by construction of the aqueduct, but in the end, the city's insatiable demand for ever more water destroyed their efforts. Some of the most regrettable incidents for which Villaraigosa apologized occurred on their watch.

Under Mayor Tom Bradley, ``environmentalists'' controlled the DWP commission. DWP President Mike Gage also served on the board of Friends of the L.A. River, and was a white-water rafter. Mary Nichols, senior staff attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, and Dorothy Green, founder and president of Heal the Bay, constituted, with Gage, a majority of DWP commissioners.

Yet DWP action following the appointment of these environmentalists aroused the wrath of Owens Valley residents, environmentalists and ethnic groups. Under them the city fought to prevent its loss of Mono Lake water. It raised objections to federal plans for Manzanar. And it minimized the DWP role in dust pollution from the bed of Owens Lake, dry because the city had purchased water rights and diverted the river long ago.

Even as the courts forced Los Angeles to negotiate groundwater pumping, river restoration and stream diversion, liberal Democrats in the Legislature and attorneys for the DWP sought delay and denied responsibility for air pollution in the Owens Valley.

Despite Villaraigosa's overture, Owens Valley residents are justified in remaining cynical. The Eastern ``Sahara'' is a product of the city's boosters.

And as long as the city owns vast segments of Owens Valley, that area will remain a man-made desert, even if water again flows in the Owens River.