Owens Lake once stretched 280 km sq and sustained the Paiute people for thousands of years. Millions of migratory birds nested here, and wild animals drank from freshwater springs.  Ever since 1924, Owens Lake has lain barren, and Owens River has been redirected into an aqueduct that runs hundreds of kilometres south. When the wind rises, arsenic and desiccated mining chemicals billow from the lakebed. Paiute Tribal Historic Preservation Officer Kathy Jefferson Bancroft has made it her life’s work to understand what is left of this watershed. The road on which we travel is maintained by the city of Los Angeles, a metropolis 400 km to the south, a five hour drive through the desert. Los Angeles takes an average one-third of its water from this remote place. Within ten years of the completion of the Los Angeles Aqueduct, Owens Lake lay empty.