It took nine months to come up with the first seal adopted in 1930. If official records are to be believed, the second one known today was designed in two weeks.

According to the minutes of the March 14, 1933, board meeting, "Director Harry Heffner says movable equipment of District needs labeling to indicate ownership." Then it was onto the next item of business—a proposal for a publication to distribute to all workmen on the aqueduct (that publication, known today as Aqueduct News, would appear the following January).

The board had wanted a design in one week. When the deadline came, Donald J. Kinsey—the same person who had drummed up overwhelming public support for the original Colorado River Aqueduct bond—told them there would be a one-week delay. The board adopted the design the following week.

Aside from the bear and poppy being moved down about 1/16 of an inch, the design seems to have been adopted as submitted.

Although renditions of the seal that would appear later would contain detailed drawings of mountains in the background, the original seal design only contained a ridgeline with a few notches.

While it's possible that the notches had some special meaning, Business Outreach Manager Bobbi Becker, who worked on the seal projects as part of the Union Station headquarters project, says it was probably just artistic license. It was also an ink drawing. The four colors would be added later.

But who was the artist?

Allan Preston suspects that the design for the seal was contracted out, and that it was a young person who did the illustration, as opposed to an engineer. He suspects that a major force behind the seal was public affairs chief Kinsey, "one of the finest spin doctors" ever.

However, another clue may be found in the name "Elliott," which appears on the 1935 engineering drawings for the seals at Iron Mountain and Intake and Gene plants, along with the 1939 drawings for the water softening (later Weymouth) plant. "Elliott" might have been Daniel Elliott, the architectural designer of the softening and filtration plants among many other projects.

But words of explanation are almost non-existent, and pictures are almost as rare. The best-known photo of the seal appeared in the September 1940 issue of Aqueduct, and was later reproduced in "Water Odyssey."

As the district expanded, the seals have taken on different variations through the years. Jensen, Weymouth and Diemer have terrazzo seals, while others display concrete cast versions. Unlike the original 1933 seal, there would now be cases where there was a river flowing from the left side. The seal at Diemer has 14 links instead of 13, Bobbi notes.

By the 1970s, the seal was falling out of fashion in some circles.
In the October 1974 board minutes, General Manager John Lauten tells the MWD directors that "for the past several years, a seal differing in design from the (original) seal has been used for identification and decorative purposes on most District-printed materials."

This simplified version consisted of an eagle, the California bear without the poppy, the aqueduct and the flowing water flanked by two branches, with a 13-link chain.

"The seal was redesigned to give it a more modern and attractive appearance in order to ensure increased effectiveness through broader public acceptance," Lauten was quoted as saying.

Longtime public affairs chief JoAnn Lundgren had arrived the year before. She said the driving force behind the attempt to simplify the seal was Al Williams, who was Public Relations director at the time.

"We had completely overhauled our publications program, and he thought that on the items where the seal was the only full-color used, such as stationery and news releases, we would be wasting money to do them in color all the time. To print such limited full-color on large quantity items there was a major cost difference, and, too, he was looking for something less ostentatious," JoAnn says. "The seal was too stiff and forbidding to use in what was becoming a more political world. It looked too bureaucratic."

"The first one was never done away with. … It was always used for formal correspondence or resolutions or any board action. They did use the newer blue and white seal for stationery (and for) news releases that went out in quantity. But I never liked it," JoAnn says.

By 1981, the board decided to bring the seal back as the official seal of the district, but it never staged a full-fledged comeback. It was six months before it reappeared on press releases in black-and-white form, and late spring 1982 before it began appearing regularly. By March 1984, it had been dropped from district news releases.

In 1986, the district decided to adopt a corporate logo and issued a press release several months later explaining that "the complexity of the design renders the seal meaningless when it is reduced in size for use on reports, letterhead and the like."

The official seal never stopped playing a starring role in MWD inspection trips, thanks to its prominent display at the Weymouth Treatment Plant. The Weymouth seal - made from imported Italian stone - was used as the basis for the version that appears in Union Station, which is one of the first things people see when they step into the main lobby.

The lobby seal reflects some of the changes that have occurred over the years. A second river was added on the right side of the seal to symbolize the State Water Project. And the workers were given more of a bronzed complexion.

The lobby seal doesn't bother Director John T. Morris all that much. But some of the other renditions bother him.

His pet peeve is that "people don't pay attention to that swivel at the center link. The chain turns direction there. If it doesn't do that, it's incorrect. The seal hanging on vice president and board executive officer Gilbert Ivey's wall—the links aren't (all facing) the right direction. If you look at the one on the (MWD) flag, it's the same situation. If you look at the one in the board room, it's done correctly."

But whatever the debate about the details, it seems to have succeeded on a larger level.

"They wanted to capture and incorporate what the district would stand for," Allan Preston says. "It solidified the organization."

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