Making a Difference

David Gaines was the sort of activist to have on your side. Mild-mannered and 40, he was no rabble rouser or bomb thrower. Gaines used the eloquence of his words and his photos to alert the nation to the environmental threats to Mono Lake, that improbable body of saline water flanked on one side by the towering Sierra Nevada and on another by a moonscape of volcanic craters.

Gaines founded the Mono Lake Committee 10 years ago, working out of makeshift offices inLee Vining. In that short decade the committee won approval in the California Legislature of the Mono Lake Tufa State Reserve and in Congress of the Mono Basin National Forest Scenic Area. Gaines and the committee sued the City of Los Angeles to limit its diversion of water from Mono’s tributaries, but also managed to maintain a dialogue with the city in an effort to settle their differences amicably. Most recently the committee and the city agreed to engage the Environmental Defense Fund to find replacement water for the disputed supplies that the city had diverted.

City water chief Duane Georgeson remembers Gaines as an effective foe who conducted himself responsibly and as a gentleman. Gaines was killed Monday when the auto in which he was riding was struck head on by another vehicle on U.S. 395 near Mammoth Lakes. Gaines was returning home from Bishop, where he had worked on the Mono Lake newsletter, which he edited.

In a recent newsletter Gaines wrote: “The birds and animals, trees and grasses, rocks, water and wind are our allies. They waken our senses, rouse our passions, renew our spirits and fill us with vision, courage and joy . . . . We are Mono Lake.” To many, David Gaines was Mono Lake.