… It was in 1878 that the fresh-faced Belfast-born [William] Mulholland rocked up in the city and met a local well digger who needed an extra pair of hands, then picked up the trade himself. Newly obsessed with water (or the lack of it) he rose quickly through the ranks of various hydrology companies, eventually becoming head of the Los Angeles Water Department. After a particularly biblical drought, in 1904 he set himself the goal of permanently hydrating the city and its 100,000 odd residents. His plan? Use gravity alone to “surreptitiously steal” the water of “a large prehistoric freshwater lake” in the distant Owens Valley (“the Switzerland of California”) and send it back to Los Angeles.