Help for Mono Lake

There should have been little surprise at the U.S. Forest Service’s recommendation last week that the level of Mono Lake be maintained at the range of 6,390 to 6,377 feet above sea level. The lake now is at the lower limit, just above the point at which Negrit Island ceases being an island and is linked by a land bridge to the Mono Lake shore. This permits predators like coyotes to walk onto the island and prey on this important bird-nesting area.

The lake minimum that was proposed by the Forest Service is similar to recommendations of scientific groups and the Mono Lake Committee of water levels needed to maintain the lake as the scenic and scientific resource that won it federal protection in 1984 as a national Forest Service scenic area. The occasion of the announcement by the Forest Service was the release of a draft plan, requested by Congress, for the management of the 41,000-acre lake and surrounding region at the foot of the eastern Sierra near the town of Lee Vining in Mono County.

There is little dispute about the need and desire to maintain Mono Lake, but there is a hitch, of course. The reason the level of the lake has declined about 40 feet in the past 40 years or so is that the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power has been diverting Sierra stream water to Los Angeles to augment its municipal water supply. This is stream water that normally flows into the lake. The only feasible way of preventing further drops in the level of the lake is to cut back on the city’s water diversions by about 70,000 acre-feet a year. This must be accomplished soon, or the continued depletion of the lake will cause significant harm to the unique ecosystem there.

The handwriting has been on the wall before the Department of Water and Power for some time. Nearly everyone, including Mayor Tom Bradley, agrees that Mono Lake must be stabilized. The city has been on the losing end of lawsuits that seek to maintain the lake by restricting Los Angeles’ water diversions. City officials have been involved in negotiations with the Mono Lake Committee, the Forest Service, the Environmental Defense Fund and others to find replacement water.

One source is conservation within the city itself. Los Angeles residents have demonstrated that they can save as much as 10% of historic supplies a year without hardship. That alone would be enough to offset the water that must be sacrificed in order to maintain Mono Lake.

The Forest Service cannot force Los Angeles to give up water, because the 1984 law creating the Mono Lake scenic area specifically protected existing water rights. But the federal government can be instrumental in the search for replacement water. One potential source is in another corner of the federal government.

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which operates the Central Valley Project on the other side of the Sierra, is in the process of selling 1 million acre-feet of unobligated water to farmers for irrigation supplies and to other customers, including cities and towns. If the federal government believes that Mono Lake is a precious national natural resource that must be preserved, as is clear from the congressional mandate, why can’t the federal government use some of its own unsold water to help save the lake? A simple order from the secretaries of agriculture and the interior might do the trick. One from the President surely would.