Voting Station

William Mulholland

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Bureaucrat

The Resume

    (September 11, 1855-July 22, 1935)
    Born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom
    Civil engineer
    Settled in Los Angeles
    Became a naturalized US citizen (1886)
    Superintendent of the Los Angeles Bureau of Water Works and Supply (1902-28)
    Responsible for designing the aqueducts to deliver water from the Sierra Nevada Mountains to Los Angeles

Why he might be annoying:

    He misled residents of Owens Valley in the Sierra Nevada about how much of the local runoff he was planning to divert to Los Angeles. (The actual amount: all of it.)
    When farmers and ranchers in Owens Valley began sabotaging the aqueducts, he said he 'half regretted' the loss of so many of the Valley's orchards, because there 'were no longer enough trees to hang all the trouble makers who live there.'
    He and his chief assistant inspected the St. Francis Dam and declared it safe (March 12, 1928); twelve hours later, the dam collapsed, resulting in 431 deaths, the worst disaster in California since the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.
    Investigation of the disaster concluded that Mulholland had chosen a geologically unsuitable site for the dam, making its failure a question of 'when,' not 'if.'
    Another contributing factor: after construction had begun, he ordered the height of the St. Francis Dam increased by 20 feet without making any compensating adjustments to the width of the base.

Why he might not be annoying:

    His mother died when he was seven.
    When he was fifteen, he ran away to sea after being beaten by his father for bad grades.
    He oversaw construction of the 233-mile Los Angeles Aqueduct, a project that was compared to the Panama Canal in complexity.
    At the peak of his success, he was considered a potential mayor of Los Angeles; asked about the prospect of running for office, he replied, 'I'd rather give birth to a porcupine backwards.'

Credit: C. Fishel


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    In 2023, Out of 3 Votes: 66.67% Annoying
    In 2022, Out of 1 Votes: 0% Annoying
    In 2021, Out of 18 Votes: 88.89% Annoying