Birds, Bees and Water : Thriving Gulls Spur New L.A. Bid for Mono Supplies

Despite high-powered lawyers and protracted lawsuits, it may be the sex life of the California gull that restores the city of Los Angeles’ access to water in the environmentally sensitive Mono Lake Basin in the Eastern Sierra.

The city is using evidence that gull colonies are suddenly flourishing in the ancient basin to support a request that it be allowed once again to divert water from mountain streams that feed the lake.

“This has been the best season that we’ve had in terms of the numbers of gulls nesting and the chick production,” said Mitch Kodama, a district engineer for the city’s Department of Water and Power whose court battles with environmentalists over water rights have given him a critical interest in the mating habits of gulls.

If an El Dorado County Superior Court judge rules in favor of the city, Kodama said, Los Angeles could receive an additional source of water at a time when a prolonged drought has reduced supplies from other sources. He estimated the city could divert enough water from the Mono Basin to supply 50,000 households for a year.

But the city’s efforts are being vigorously opposed by environmental groups, which have been seeking for more than a decade to stop water diversions they believe have lowered lake levels in Mono Basin and hurt wildlife.

Determining that low lake levels were indeed threatening the ecosystem--particularly gulls that nest on islands in the lake--El Dorado County Superior Court Judge Terrence Finney ruled in June, 1989, that no water could be taken from the basin until the lake reached 6,377 feet above sea level. At the time, the city was diverting enough water each year from the Mono Basin to supply about 100,000 households.

Since the lake was well below the 6,377-foot level then and has remained so since, the effect of the order was to prevent the city from making any diversions. Today the lake level is 6,374.8 feet.

“It was concluded a year and a half ago that if the lake fell below 6,377 it would be the beginning of the demise of the lake ecology and the gull population at Mono Lake would be destroyed,” said Kodama. “Here we are in 1991, the lake is two feet below that and we have the highest population on record.”

He said the judge is being asked to conclude from that evidence that lower lake levels have not hurt wildlife and therefore the temporary injunction which has stopped the city’s diversions should be dissolved.

The city is expected to make final arguments on this premise Jan. 17 and Finney is expected to rule several weeks later. A final decision on the city’s status in the Mono Lake Basin will be made by the State Water Resources Control Board in the next two years.

Opposing the arguments will be lawyers for the National Audubon Society, the U.S. Forest Service, the State Lands Commission and the Mono Lake Committee, an environmental group dedicated to preserving the lake’s ecosystem.

The environmental groups already have presented their own experts to testify that there is still evidence that the ecosystem is threatened. Although they acknowledge that gulls seem to have reproduced in large numbers this year, they argue that it is still unclear why the birthrate is so high.

“There are so many factors that go into the reproductive success of the gulls,” said Ilene Mandelbaum, associate director of the Mono Lake Committee. “You don’t study a population of animals for a short period and then draw long-reaching conclusions.”

She said evidence that other gull colonies in Utah are also reproducing at high rates indicates the sudden population jump may be a “cyclical thing.”

If lake levels continue to be low, she said, environmentalists fear the coyote may threaten the gull in the future. This year, she said, scientists found tracks that indicated coyotes had used a land bridge exposed by the low lake levels to reach Negit Island, one of the gulls’ favorite nesting places.

Although the birds appeared to move to other islands, she said, scientists fear it will only be a matter of time until coyotes will use Negit as a stepping stone to swim to them.

“What we’re playing with here are living and unique populations that may not be recoverable,” Mandelbaum said. “Basically, we’re arguing there could be irreparable harm from playing this kind of Russian roulette and is it ethically defensible?”

Both sides conceded that even if the judge dissolves his injunction, Los Angeles may not be able to take any water if the drought continues. Another ruling requires that certain amounts of water be maintained in the streams that feed the lake to protect fish life. If the snowpack is below normal this year, Kodama said, there will only be enough runoff to maintain the streams.