Perilous Political Waters : Continuing Dispute Over Mono Lake Dramatizes Bradley’s Campaign Task

The boots, running shoes and “Mono Lake, It’s Worth Saving” T-shirts of the Sierra Club members contrasted sharply with their guest’s dark blue suit and white shirt.

Here in the Central Valley, on a gloomy, rainy Saturday, March 15, Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley was confronting another problem in his campaign for governor and the sight of those T-shirts showed that finding a solution would be difficult.

At the statewide meeting of the Sierra Club, one of the nation’s oldest environmental organizations, Bradley became part of another skirmish in the longstanding battle between environmentalists and Los Angeles over preserving the water level of Mono Lake.

The meeting ended inconclusively. But the discussion, and interviews afterward, showed the complexity of the task facing Bradley in lining up environmentalists in the coalition he is trying to build for his difficult campaign against the favorite, Republican Gov. George Deukmejian.

The issue has implications beyond Los Angeles and the lake. For while Mono Lake is far from population centers, the dispute over its future touches on something bigger--how to supply unpolluted water to an increasingly populous state while preserving California’s beauty.

The lake, formed a million years ago, is a large, salty body of water located in the barren, high desert east of Yosemite National Park.

Mono Lake is a startling sight, lifeless looking because of its arid surroundings, uninviting to some but beguiling to generations of visitors fascinated by the contrasts of the water, the volcanic, arid land and the sharp, granite snow-topped Sierra peaks not far away. “Frost and fire working together in the making of beauty,” is how John Muir, the naturalist, described the scene.

Water from four of the five Sierra streams that feed the lake has been diverted since 1941 to Los Angeles for the city’s water supply, diversions that lowered the lake 43 feet between 1941 and 1981. Environmentalists say the lower levels have threatened the brine shrimp in the lake and the California gulls that feed from the shrimp.

Although wet years in 1982-83, 1984-85 and this year have raised the level, lake preservationists came to the statewide Sierra Club meeting determined to wrest from Bradley a pledge to try to find a way to reduce the amount of water Los Angeles imports from the Mono Basin and to use it to permanently raise the level of the lake. Before the meeting, the Mono Lake Committee gave Sierra Club members the T-shirts, hoping the display would show the mayor they were ready to fight.

Opposing the lake preservationists for years have been Bradley, the City Council and the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, which says it would cost city residents roughly $50 a year in higher utility bills if the DWP tried to replace the Mono Basin water from other sources. Reflecting a view still held by city water officials, Sara C. Stivelman, former president of the Los Angeles Board of Water and Power Commissioners, said in 1983: “Clearly, one can question the fairness of simply cutting the Los Angeles water supply so that more fresh water can be used to raise the level of a 60-square mile saline lake.”

Environmentalists say that if Bradley sides with the city department, he may lose the Sierra Club endorsement for governor, and damage the coalition-building effort that is a major part of the early campaign against Deukmejian.

“We feel very strongly that of all the issues facing Mayor Bradley right now, this is one under his control,” said Martha Davis of the Mono Lake Committee. “He can do something right now. It is a top-priority issue. It will have an impact on whether the Sierra Club endorses him.”

A panel of Sierra Club members questioned the mayor at the meeting about Mono Lake and other environmental issues. One panelist pointed out to Bradley that the T-shirts reflected the members’ concern with Mono and asked him if he would be willing to divert all of the runoff to the lake in this wet year--and if he had any long-range solutions.

“I believe that while this is a wet year and there certainly will not be the need for that lake to be diminished or reduced . . . to say take no water, I can’t give you a precise answer on that because I don’t know if there will be a need for it or if that could be done without having a detrimental effect on the water supply of Los Angeles.”

As for long-range solutions, Bradley said: “I have recently sent a team to Mono Lake . . . to discuss the long-term problem and I believe they found these meetings were very helpful and constructive and . . . I think we have slowly but surely moved in the direction of providing the kind of protection I think is necessary in Mono Lake and other areas from which a great deal of our water supply comes.”

Afterward, Sierra Club officials said the group will discuss an endorsement later in the year. The Mono Lake Committee’s Davis said she was unhappy that Bradley did not give a stronger commitment. Would that cost him the endorsement?

“I don’t know,” she said. “The Sierra Club is evaluating him on other issues, but clearly Mono Lake is top priority with the Sierra Club and with environmentalists.”

Court Setbacks

Over the years, the city has been set back by court rulings. The legal climate has changed from decades ago when Los Angeles was freely permitted to divert water from the Mono Basin and from the Owens Valley, just south of the lake, for a huge water importation project that assured water for the city’s growth while forever angering residents along the eastern side of the Sierra.

In 1983, the Supreme Court ruled that the city’s Mono Basin water rights must be balanced against the needs of the state, and that the lake is a statewide resource. The court said the Department of Water and Power had taken water without apparent regard for “the resulting damage to the scenery, ecology and human uses of Mono Lake.” It turned the matter back to state agencies and courts for settlement.

Congress recognized the value of the lake to the nation by creating a Mono Basin National Forest Scenic Area--an act that is likely to strengthen the environmentalists’ hands in the legal proceedings that are continuing, without settlement in sight.

Los Angeles water officials said that the outcome will affect every city resident because of the need for water and for power generated as the water travels south.

“The fundamental problem we have is there is a large amount of water and hydroelectric power that the people of Los Angeles have been relying on in accord with all the permits and licenses,” said Duane Georgeson, assistant general manager of the DWP. “To find a replacement is difficult because all the cheap, easily developed water and electric sources have been committed to someone else for a long time. So replacement is very expensive.”

Seeks Water Diversion

The Mono Lake Committee says it wants 70,000 acre-feet of the city’s 100,000 acre-feet supply from the Mono Basin diverted to the lake permanently. (An acre-foot is the amount of water it takes to cover an acre to a depth of a foot or, roughly, the amount of water consumed by a family of four in a year).

Georgeson said that water would have to be replaced, probably by purchasing it from the Southern California Metropolitan Water District, which obtains its water from the Colorado River and from Northern California through the California Water Project.

He said it would cost $17 million a year to buy that water, along with another $15 million a year to replace the power. He estimated that such action would force an increase of city ratepayers’ water and power bills by about $50 a year.

“Our customers by and large think they are paying too much for their water and electricity right now,” Georgeson said.

Policy Set by Board

Department policy is set by the board of commissioners, which is appointed by the mayor. But Bradley has been reluctant to dictate to the board. He called the department “semi-independent” in his appearance before the Sierra Club.

While that may not be precisely accurate--Bradley can replace the board with council approval--the department has great political strength of its own, with strong support from business and labor. The city has always appreciated the way the department brought Owens Valley water to Los Angeles and neither Bradley nor his predecessors has ever felt strong enough to push it around.

Deputy Mayor Tom Houston, trying to work out a solution for Bradley, said the answer will be complicated and “involves major decisions for Los Angeles’ future.”

Houston cited one example: the issue of water purity.

Los Angeles is now facing pollution problems with San Fernando Valley wells that have become contaminated with cancer-causing chemicals from industrial plants and other businesses.

Supply Not Threatened

At present, officials said, the city water supply is not threatened because of Los Angeles’ ability to import so much water from the Owens Valley and the Mono Basin.

But officials fear that might change if Los Angeles must give up 70,000 acre-feet of Mono water and purchase replacement water from the Metropolitan Water District. That is because an increasing amount of the MWD supply will come from Northern California in future years as Arizona takes more and more Colorado River water for its Central Arizona Project.

Officials are concerned about the future purity of the northern supply. State testing has shown that some northern water, largely from the San Joaquin River, flowing into the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta is polluted. While cleaner water from the far north cuts down that pollution, water experts said they are worried that a series of dry years would reduce the size of the northern supply and increase pollution.

The potential arrival of such water could be a political problem for Bradley, who is backing a proposed initiative that would set strict anti-pollution limits for drinking water and disposal of toxic wastes, aiming to eliminate the discharge of carcinogenic substances into drinking-water supplies.

Conservation, Reclamation

Mono Lake preservationists say that the city could make up the 70,000 acre-feet by conservation and by water reclamation, without using MWD water.

“The $50 figure sounds high to us,” Davis said. “They (the Department of Water and Power) traditionally cite the most expensive sources of water and have, in fact, not opted for conservation.”

Meanwhile, Davis and other lake advocates are meeting with city officials under the auspices of UCLA’s Public Policy Program, trying to settle the dispute.