U.S. Owns 12,000 Acres Near Mono Lake, Appeals Court Says

The federal government, not California, owns 12,000 acres of land around Mono Lake that has been uncovered as the lake level has fallen, a U.S. appeals court said Tuesday.

The ruling by a unanimous three-member panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a decision by Chief U.S. District Judge Lawrence Karlton of Sacramento.

“The effect of the court’s ruling is to protect those lands, and for that matter Mono Lake, from commercial mining or mineral leasing activities,” said Laurens Silver, a lawyer for the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Counsel.

He said federal law prohibits mining on land that is part of a national scenic area like the Mono Basin. Although the State Lands Commission, which also claimed the land, had no plans to mine it, state law would not have barred mining, Silver said.

State Deputy Atty. Gen. Jan Stevens said the state’s plans for the disputed land were “protective.”

Silver also said ownership of land around the lake puts the federal government in a stronger position to assert water rights that may outweigh the rights of the City of Los Angeles in the long-running suit over the city’s pumping of water from Mono Lake tributaries.

That suit is now in Alpine County Superior Court. The federal government has not claimed any water rights that would restrict pumping by Los Angeles, but Silver said environmental groups may be able to sue to get the government to assert its rights.

The 12,000 acres have been exposed as a result of the pumping that has lowered the level of the scenic Sierra lake from 6,417 feet to 6,380 feet above sea level since 1940. Though the level has risen slightly in the last few years because of above-average rainfall, it is expected to fall again in the future.

The exposed land is believed to contain salts and geothermal resources. In a 1980 suit, the state, as owner of the lake bed, claimed title to the exposed land; the federal government, as owner of most of the uplands around the lake, disputed the claim.