L.A. Backing State Plan for Mono Lake : Drought: DWP official promotes the transfer to city of water rights now used by some farmers. If approved, the concept would end long-running environmental battle.

Amid accusations from environmentalists that Los Angeles continues to drag its feet on a plan to restore Mono Lake, key officials revealed Tuesday that the city has endorsed a state proposal for settling the long-running dispute.

Michael Gage, president of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power board, said he has agreed to promote a plan that would transfer to the city the water rights now used by some farmers in the San Joaquin Valley.

Although the proposal is months and maybe years away from being adopted, Gage said the additional water would replace whatever amount of water the city agrees to permanently give up from the environmentally endangered Mono Lake Basin in the Eastern Sierra.

Lt. Gov. Leo McCarthy, who as chairman of the State Lands Commission is pushing to bring all sides to agree on the plan, said it would not only settle the decades-long environmental battle over Mono Lake but also help solve a “critical problem of toxic agricultural drainage” on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley.

Since the late 1970s, environmentalists have tried to limit Los Angeles’ diversions from the Mono Lake Basin, contending that by lowering the lake level the city was endangering wildlife. In the years since, a separate environmental problem emerged in the San Joaquin Valley: toxic materials were leaching from the soil into the water table through irrigation.

While numerous technical details are still to be resolved, McCarthy said the Mono Lake plan would work essentially like this: Farmers would be asked to take the most polluted fields out of production and sell the water used to irrigate that land to the state. The state would then use the water for a variety of needs, including replacing Los Angeles’ Mono Lake supplies.

He said “seed” money for the purchases of the land or water rights would come from a special $60-million fund established by the Legislature two years ago. The Legislature specifically said money from the fund could be used to find alternative water sources for the city of Los Angeles, but only if it reaches an agreement with environmentalists on a way to restore Mono Lake.

McCarthy said his proposal has already won support from the city and the Mono Lake Committee, an environmental group, but it has yet to even be presented to the most critical group--the San Joaquin Valley farmers.

“This is not all a bed of roses. On the one hand we think we have a vehicle here which could bring peace,” McCarthy said. “On the other, this is one of those situations where you have to carefully and delicately involve all the principles.”

Environmentalists, meanwhile, applauded the plan but expressed fears that the city was not acting in good faith. Their concerns drew an immediate response from Gage, who accused the Mono Lake Committee of “mounting a campaign of disinformation.”

Martha Davis, the Mono Lake Committee’s executive director, said she was getting “mixed signals” from officials because the city was not only endorsing McCarthy’s proposal, it was also continuing to seek permission from the courts to divert water from the Mono Lake Basin.

In April, an El Dorado County Superior Court judge ruled for the third time that, to protect a unique and delicate ecosystem, Mono Lake must be allowed to rise two feet to the 6,377-foot level. He said years of diversions by the city had lowered the lake’s water level dramatically, threatening many species that thrive there, including the California sea gull.

Contending that the judge’s decision “is supported by neither the evidence nor the law,” the city asked last week that he reconsider his ruling. Since the lake is well below the level set by the judge, attorneys for the city said the ruling had the effect of stopping all diversions from the Mono Lake Basin for an indefinite time.

To Davis, the city’s push for a rehearing on the case only cast doubt on its sincerity in pursuing a solution to the Mono Lake problem.

“The Department of Water and Power’s behavior by going back to the court for yet a fourth time only underscores the point that the battle is still going on,” she said. “They’re not negotiating here. If anything it’s the same old business of trying to undercut the amount of water that is really needed to protect Mono Lake.”

She said it appeared that while Gage was moving in one direction to solve the Mono Lake problem, the city water bureaucracy “seemed to be headed 180 degrees in the opposition direction as fast as they can.”

Davis said the city had shown scant interest in negotiating a “permanent” environmental plan for the lake. Specifically, city officials seemed unwilling to consider the environmentalists’ proposal to establish a permanent lake level of 6,386 feet.

But an angry Gage insisted that the city has been willing to negotiate all along but environmentalists have refused to consider a compromise.

Gage said the decision to seek reconsideration of the judge’s ruling was nothing more than a “little legal ploy” to preserve the city’s right to appeal the issue at a later date if necessary.

Given the judge’s repeated rulings against the city, Gage said, “Nobody suspected for a second that our filing the (request) with the judge would succeed.”