the formation of Metropolitan Water District in 1928 is a photo of well-dressed gentlemen on the landscaped grounds of a Pasadena hotel – a genteel image of a distant time.

Behind the elegant poses were communities convulsed by change. Many were undergoing astronomical population growth. Most were running out of water.

1928 was a world quite different, yet similar to our own.

Richard E. Byrd was advancing on the South Pole. In Afghanistan, anti-Western forces were attacking Kabul. Terrorists were loose in Russia. U.S. Marines were in Nicaragua, and America was emerging as a world power. A.P Giannini was announcing a merger that created Bank of America. Outgoing President Calvin Coolidge had made several successive tax cuts, leading to warnings of a huge $40 million deficit.

Ty Cobb was announcing his retirement and the USC Trojans were being hailed as the best football team in the country, despite a disappointing game against the California Golden Bears of UC Berkeley.

Ralph’s was selling T-bone steak for 471/2 cents a pound. Dr. Beauchamp was peddling a set of false teeth for $12.50. Oil derricks covered the coastline. Housing and business were booming. Lots in the Pacific Palisades were going for $2,000.

But trouble lurked underneath.

“Providing water for people in Southern California became a big problem by the end of the 19th century,” said Timothy F. Brick, a Metropolitan board member for the city of Pasadena who has written on Metropolitan’s beginnings.

A new device – the hydraulic pump – made it possible to extract water from ever deeper under the ground, but that only sped up the day of reckoning.

“The growth was just astounding,” Brick said. “Not having enough water and looking to the future was a very real thing for them. They projected even greater growth in population than we have seen. It’s kind of scary what a lot of them believed in the ’20s. They thought that by the mid-’60s they would have the population we have now,” a mindset that influenced the sizing of the Colorado River Aqueduct, Brick said.

In the Orange County of the mid-to-late 19th century, Anaheim settlers could dig 15 feet and hit water. By 1913, hundreds of pumps were at work, yet there were panicked moments when the pipes went dry. In the mid-1920s, the city was sinking wells 600 feet deep.

Nearby Santa Ana had only purchased its first fire engine in 1921. But city leaders knew it couldn’t rely on the same solutions that worked in 1869, when founder William H. Spurgeon was able to tap into a single artesian well to supply the 74 acres he had snapped up for $500.

In Los Angeles County, an uneasy détente existed between the city of Los Angeles and its neighbors.

“Beginning with the opening of the Los Angeles aqueduct, a lot of smaller cities had to make a decision whether to annex to Los Angeles or not,” Brick said.

Native Americans had called Beverly Hills the Gathering of the Waters – a place where three canyon streams merged. Yet the community had already been twice devastated by drought during the 19th century, and when the city was only seven years old, complaints over the city’s pungent, sulfurous water led to an annexation attempt in 1923. Annexation supporters left bottles of local water on doorsteps warning of its “laxative qualities.” Annexationfailed by 170 votes out of less than 850 cast.

There were 500 people in Burbank when it incorporated in 1911. By 1930 it topped 16,000 – a 30-fold increase fueled by aviation and movies. The local studio–Warner Brothers – issued “The Jazz Singer” the year before Metropolitan was born, ushering in the era of sound movies.

In Glendale, a 1913 water war had flared between older residents who wanted a municipal water system, and a younger generation that at the time wanted to be part of Los Angeles.

Thanks to annexations, Glendale had grown by 75 percent in area in the 1920s. Population had exploded from under 14,000 in 1920 to nearly 63,000 in 1930. Glendale dubbed itself “The Fastest Growing City in America.”

Glendale had been sued by the city of Los Angeles, which claimed that Glendale’s water wells were drawing on the Los Angeles River.

Santa Monica was growing like a city in a sped-up computer game. Between 1920 and 1930, the city got an airport, an airplane factory and a junior college, and its population had more than doubled – to 37,000 people.

But while these communities confronted real issues, the fight for the Metropolitan Water District would fall to Los Angeles and Pasadena.

Pasadena had incorporated in 1886, precisely so it wouldn’t be annexed by the city of Los Angeles. While it enjoyed a friendly relationship as a cultured Los Angeles suburb, it valued its independence.

Shortly after the turn of the century, a financially charged debate erupted over buying out Pasadena’s private water companies, and it was “a tough battle that tore the city apart,” Brick said.

The pre-Metropolitan era is part of the family lore for San Marino director John Morris, whose grandfather, Samuel B. Morris, played a crucial role in the district’s birth as head of the Pasadena city water department.

“Pasadena tried to cut a deal with L.A. in 1913 to get access to Owens River water,” Morris said. When Los Angeles demanded annexation as the price, the deal died.

As Brick noted, “by 1910 or 1911, no (Pasadena) politician would dare suggest linking up to L.A.”

Pasadena was beginning to realize that its local supplies and water from the Arroyo Seco weren’t going to meet the city’s needs. In addition to scouting sites from the Mojave Desert to Ventura County, Pasadena was also staking a claim to the San Gabriel River, which was ruffling feathers in downstream communities like Long Beach, Brick said.