http://www.latimes.com/science/la-me-1115-owens-20141115-story.html

Los Angeles ended a bitter dispute with Owens Valley on Friday
with the announcement of a truce in a decades-long dispute over water and dust.

Under an agreement between the city and Owens Valley air quality regulators, Los
Angeles will use a new, organic method of suppressing airborne dust from the dry
bed of Owens Lake, which L.A. drained to slake its thirst in the last century.
The new method will eventually save the Department of Water and Power enough
water to supply 150,000 Los Angeles residents each year.

For nearly two decades, DWP has flooded most of the 110-square-mile lake bed to
prevent choking dust storms in the valley that left residents suffering from
asthma and other respiratory ailments. The new solution is relatively
inexpensive and nearly waterless, DWP officials said. It involves using tractors
to turn moist lake bed clay into furrows and basketball-sized clods of dirt. The
clods will bottle up the dust for years before breaking down, at which point the
process will be repeated.

Thanks to Ron Gleason.