Mono Issue Can Be Negotiated

Who is winning the confusing legal battle between the friends of Mono Lake and the City of Los Angeles? That depends. In Sacramento one week a court rules for the city Department of Water and Power, which has diverted water from the Mono Basin to Los Angeles since 1941. In Bridgeport the next week a different judge finds in favor of the Mono Lake Committee, which wants water kept in the streams that feed the lake.

The dispute seems pretty parochial, but the outcome can have an effect far beyond the lake itself or the water taps in Los Angeles. It touches the ultimate question facing California: Can every reasonable water demand be met, and how?

In microcosm, the battle pits the city’s longstanding water rights against laws and legal theory protecting the environment. That is a seemingly esoteric conflict, but esoterica become terribly real if the courts ultimately rule that Los Angeles must give up much of its water to preserve Mono Lake and two trout streams.

To make up the loss, the city could call on the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California for the use of Los Angeles’ historic but largely unused entitlement to MWD water from the Colorado River or the state Water Project. But MWD faces potential shortages because of its own loss of Colorado River water to Arizona, because of environmental considerations in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and because the state project has not been expanded to its planned capacity.

In a crunch, Los Angeles’ tapping of MWD water might force MWD to cut back its supplies to San Diego, which has a lower priority than Los Angeles but is heavily dependent on MWD water. Could San Diego then go to court to force farmers in the San Joaquin Valley to give up some of their state irrigation water to meet critical people needs? Or sue to force reductions of environmental water use in the delta?

In the extreme, could Southern California successfully tap wild and scenic rivers in Northern California? Or challenge Wyoming or Colorado for their unused Colorado River supplies?

Barring a catastrophic drought, such questions may never have to be raised. California should have enough water, used wisely, to meet all reasonable needs--including environmental protection. But those needs can be met only if the state develops a modern water rights and allocation system that considers all demands and balances them against environmental considerations in some comprehensive scheme.

Mono Lake is a unique natural asset that must be protected. Los Angeles must have an adequate water supply. Both goals can be achieved if modern water management and creative thinking are brought to bear on a California water plan for the 21st Century.

In the meantime, the City of Los Angeles and the Mono Lake Committee should try to reconcile their differences out of court. Studies are under way that might provide the groundwork for a resolution. The city and Inyo County reached such an agreement several years ago in their long battle over Owens Valley water. Negotiation of the Los Angeles-Mono Lake issue is bound to produce a more practical solution than protracted litigation that always carries the potential for surprising consequences not desired by either party.