MWD May Back Bill on Mono Lake Water Dispute

The Metropolitan Water District, which wields strong clout with lawmakers, is preparing to join Los Angeles in supporting legislation designed to force a settlement of a decades-long dispute over water diversions from the Mono Lake Basin.

General Manager Carl Baronkay said Wednesday he is recommending that his 51-member board of directors endorse the landmark proposals by Assemblymen Phillip Isenberg (D-Sacramento) and William Baker (R-Danville) because they provide funds for the city to develop other water sources.

The proposals direct Los Angeles to reach an agreement with environmentalists on a plan for protecting the lake, which both sides acknowledge would include requirements that the city reduce its diversions from the basin. They also create a $100-million Environmental Water Fund that can be used to help the city develop other water projects.

Baronkay said the funding would allow the city to make up for its water losses from the Mono Lake Basin in the eastern Sierra without having to make substantial demands on the Metropolitan Water District. The MWD serves a group of Southland communities that does not include Los Angeles except intermittently when the city’s other water sources fall short.

“If you give them the dollars to go somewhere else and find substitute water, then that helps all of us,” Baronkay said. “They’re not an additional burden to us. We want this money to encourage them to get a substitute supply knowing they can always fall back on us if necessary.”

Without the legislation, he said, the dispute over Mono Lake is likely to be settled by the courts, which so far “seem not to favor the position of Los Angeles.” Nor, he said, do the courts seem willing to address the issue of the costs the city would have to incur to find other water sources.

The lawsuits filed by environmental groups contend that the city’s diversions have lowered the lake level and endangered its ecosystem. The city draws one-seventh of its water supplies from the Mono Lake Basin. The water also produces electricity for the city as it flows through power plants along the aqueduct system.

Baker said decisions by the water district and the city to support the legislation creates a “very strong likelihood” that it can now pass the Legislature.

“I think the district and the city have considerable influence in the committees in both houses but especially in the Senate. The package had been running into a bit of a problem in the Senate,” he said.

On Tuesday, the Los Angeles City Council formally endorsed the bills after Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky argued that the legislation was the city’s best chance to get state funding for the development of replacement water sources.

“The residents of this city for over 40 years have received a clean and steady supply of water from the Mono Lake Basin,” he said. “Now is the time to balance the city’s needs with those of the Mono Lake Basin ecosystem.”

The bills have passed the Assembly but are still pending in the Senate Committee on Agriculture and Water.