State Backs Effort to Raise Mono Lake Level

In its strongest endorsement yet of the push to preserve fragile Mono Lake in the Eastern Sierra, the Wilson Administration joined forces Monday with environmentalists in demanding that the lake’s water level be significantly raised.

James M. Strock, Gov. Pete Wilson’s secretary for environmental protection, said Monday he favors raising Mono Lake’s surface to 6,390 feet above sea level, which environmental groups and some government agencies contend is the minimum necessary to protect the scenic lake region’s water and air quality, fisheries and wildlife habitat.

Strock delivered the Wilson Administration’s view at a hearing of the State Water Resources Control Board, which will decide by next September how much Mono Lake water the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power will be allowed to continue shipping south.

Los Angeles has collected water from streams that feed the saline lake for 50 years and transported it across 350 miles of desert and mountains through the Los Angeles Aqueduct. The city has been unable to use any Mono Basin water since 1989 because of court orders and a long drought in the area.

Martha Davis, executive director of the nonprofit Mono Lake Committee, called the Wilson Administration’s stand “courageous,” considering the controversy that has swirled around the body of water north of Mammoth Lakes for decades.

“To take a position like this is affirmative, it says we are going to do what’s necessary” to protect the lake, Davis said.

Monday’s hearing at UCLA kicked off a month of testimony before the state water board over the future of the lake, which is in a national scenic area in Mono County and is a nesting area for thousands of California sea gulls, grebes and migratory birds. The hearings continue today in Mammoth Lakes.

Later this month the board will hold 20 days of evidentiary hearings, taking testimony from scores of scientists and government officials.

The DWP, which has lost a decade of court battles to continue its access to Mono Basin water, did not testify at the Monday hearing, preferring to wait until evidentiary hearings begin in Sacramento.

But William J. Hasencamp, who oversaw an environmental impact study of Mono Lake for the DWP, said Monday that the water agency believes a lower lake level can both protect the lake’s ecosystems and allow the city future access to water there.

The department has sought court permission to keep the lake’s surface at 6,377 feet above sea level, 13 feet less than the Wilson Administration recommends and only two feet above the current level. It would take 35 years for Mono Lake to reach 6,390 feet, Hasencamp said, meaning that “for the next 35 years, Los Angeles would get little or no water from the basin.”

Historically, Los Angeles has taken about 85,000 acre-feet of water a year from Mono Lake streams, about 15% of the city’s needs. The rest comes from the Owens River and underground water pumped from the Owens Valley south of Mammoth Lakes, the State Water Project, the Colorado River and wells in the Los Angeles area.

In recent years the city has been barred under a court injunction from drawing any Mono Basin stream water until the area’s complex ecological problems are worked out and the lake level reaches 6,377 feet. An acre-foot is typically enough water to meet the needs of two families in Los Angeles for one year.

At Monday’s hearing, a parade of environmentalists, birders and scenery lovers told the water board of the need to protect the lake’s ecosystem. They described decades of grebe watching, complained that the waters have become too saline to baptize babies in and proclaimed their love of the lake and the Eastern Sierra.

Others reminded the board that, as the water level drops, deadly air pollution in the form of tiny dust particles has increased. In August, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency listed the Mono Lake area as a major violator of federal air pollution standards.

There was little dissent Monday from the view that Mono Lake should be raised to 6,390 feet. Larry Bacharach, spokesman for the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce, told the board how important a “reliable supply of water” is for companies considering locating in the Southland.

The chamber, he said, recommends that water from Mono Lake be used “until replacement water becomes available through water transfers, water recycling or other innovative programs.”