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Show Western Resources Mono Lake controversy By llelene C. Monberg ashington Is it worth $223 million ,. to save a flock of California gulls bout $75,000 per gull and Califor-s Califor-s Mono Lake where Los Angeles' er rights are involved? S) says an interagency task force jono Lake which filed a final report he controversy on Dec. 12. o says the City of Los Angeles thru gepartment of Water and Power. , the matter is at an impasse. we started out with the task e a year ago, we thought this was a to bring the state and the city of Angeles together on solving the io Lake problem, but all it did was rize the parties to the con-ersy," con-ersy," Edward L. Hastey, former i director of the California Bureau and Management (BLM) office and associate director of BLM here in hington, told Western Resources p-up on Dec. 19. issue is the declining level of Mono e, which is located just east of :mite National Park near the ada border in east central fornia about 340 miles due north of :ity of Los Angeles. Mono Lake is a nant of an ice-age lake formed g the eastern side of the Sierra ada mountain range about 12,000-X) 12,000-X) years ago. ith no outlet, the salinity of the lake increased over the years. And with rsions to Los Angeles under per-:d per-:d water rights owned by the city, level of the lake has declined from it 6,417 feet in 1940 to about 6,374 as of July 1, 1979, a drop of 43 feet, drop in the lake's elevation was aging 1.1 feet a year until 1970, n the second Los Angeles aqueduct ting operating. Since then the drop averaged 1.6 feet per year. s Angeles' diversions out of four )ms that feed Mono Lake are ex-ed ex-ed to average about 100,000 acre-a acre-a year, or about 20 percent of the s existing water supply. At that rsion level, the lake is expected to ilize in from 50-100 years at an ation about 40-60 feet below its ent level. It will then be about 30 ire miles, or about one-third of its diversion size. rHER MONO LAKE PROBLEMS the lake size-has-decreasedtwo--r events have occurred which has ed up the environmental groups in fornia. Its salinity has increased. 0 Lake is now about 2.5 times as 1 as the ocean. It is also highly line, and other chemicals tend to sntrate in the lake. So the only life living in the lake are brine mpand algae. Brine flies live along shoreline. rhe brine shrimp and brine flies 'ide a competition-free food source the birdlife in the area. Whether food source can continue to exist as raical densities increase is iown, "the report of the task force ed. ntil this past year, several colonies alifornia gulls totaling about 38,400 i on Negit Island in Mono Lake, lal counts and estimates of the iber of breeding adults among these s by David Winkler and a team of rested biologists indicated the iber dropped from 38,400 in the rs 1976-78 to between 4,800-8,600 this r, a drop of up to 30,000. The drop attributed to a land bridge which formed with the decline in the 'ation of Mono Lake, thereby wing predators such as coyotes and es to reach Negit Island and prey the nesting birdlife. Efforts have fi made to blast a channel to arate Negit Island from the nland and to put up a fence to try to P the prey away from the nesting llife. hese activities have also stirred up troversy. Steve Busch, of Lee ing, Calif., Mono Lake, reported to Mono Lake Committee formed to e Mono Lake that the result of the Mng on April 10 to destroy the land Ige was "disappointing. Most of the 1 fell straight back down into the ! from which it had been violately avated. Consequently a man or tator can still walk across the land ge and invade the seagull rookery Negit Island by merely getting his K or paws muddy," Busch repor-A repor-A chain-link fence will be put up to to protect the gulls on Negit Island 1 their predators, with bids to be ned on the fence contract on Jan. 3, 1 Current estimates are that it will ' about $80,000. The people of Mono ;edon'twant the fence built because be unsightly, according to Mrs. n Green of the Mono County Board Supervisors. And it won't work ay, according to the Mono Lake "mittee, because "coyotes can dig ler fences. They can swim, even in no's brine," But BLM's Hastey told ;w on Dec. 19, "They (Mono Lake ldents) will just have to live with the ce for awhile." her is some controversy over Hher the gulls have to nest at Negit lnd- A study on the history of Mono !e that appeared in the Mono Lake nmittee summer 1979 newsletter lcated an observer reported in 1916 at least 1000 pairs were breeding on the north end of Paoha Island and none at all cm Negit. "This is the only indication that the main colony has not always been on Negit," it reported. The task force cited data indicating that 4,000 breeding adults in 1979 were nesting on some tiny islets west of Paoha Island-and Island-and most of these island slivers have become available for such use as Mono Lake has dropped. No birds are now nesting on Paoha Island. TASK FORCE RECOMMENDATIONS The recommendations that the interagency in-teragency task force made on June 29 and on Dec. 12 in its initial and final reports were essentially the same. It recommended, in sum, that Los Angeles cut down its water diversions from Mono Basin from an average of 100,000 acre-feet a year to 15,000 acre-feet acre-feet a year, which it claimed was needed "to protect downstream fisheries." It recommended that a bill in the state legislature be amended to "protect the city's water rights in Mono Basin against loss thru non-use." It recommended that the city purchase up to 85,000 acre-feet of replacement water a year from the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (MWD) until Los Angeles could put extensive water conservation and waste water reclamation programs into effect. It said the city should be able to cut back on water use by 15 percent by 1985, and that it should be able to reclaim up to 56,000 acre-feet of water by 1987. Until these two programs are in operation, the task force recommended that costs of replacement water should be shared equally by the City, State, and federal government for a five-year period ending in 1984. It stated that the City will not suffer a net loss of energy, even tho the 85,000 acre-feet of water goes thru City-owned turbines because the water conservation program would result in a net energy savings to the City. So any "replacement energy would (have to) be obtained by the City at its own expense," the task force stated. And it recommended a five-year research program for Mono Basin to be conducted by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management and the State Department of Fish and Game. Rep. Norman D. Shumway, R-Calif., introduced a bill on Dec. 19 to implement imple-ment a portion of the task force recom-. recom-. mendations. It authorizes federal participation par-ticipation in the research study and in helping the city to provide replacement water. The authorization is for five years for the research study at $25,000 a year and five years for the replacement water at $2,700,000 a year. Shumway represents the Mono Lake area in the House, and he is looking for co-sponsors for his bill. WATER ESTABLISHMENT DISSENTS The entire West is likely to hear about the Mono Lake controversy before it is over. Those who served on the task force represented federal, state and local agencies with substantial interests in the area: the Bureau of Land Management, the U.S. Forest Service, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service at the federal level; the Department of Water Resources and the Department of Fish and Game at the state level ; and the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power and Mono County at the local level. The task force had been put together at the suggestion of Hastey while state director of the BLM office in California and by Huey D. Johnson, Secretary for Resources for the state of California. The State Resources Agency Agen-cy was designated as the lead agency, and the chairmanship of the task force was delegated to the State Department of Water Resources. There was agreement agree-ment by the task force with one outstanding outstan-ding exception: Duane L. Georgeson, the engineer in charge of the Los Angeles Aqueduct, who bitterly opposed oppos-ed the recommendations. Georgeson not only refused to sign the two reports and the recommenda-' recommenda-' tions, but he appealed to the City and to the Water Establishment in California to fight the recommendations. He brought his story to Western Resources Wrap-up; he appealed to the Western States Water Council in Salt Lake City, and he is in the process of contacting others interested in water matters throughout the West. "I am going to fight these recommendations tooth and toenail " Georgeson vowed during his discussions with WRW. "Huey Johnson is trying to help the (National ) Audubon Society in its law suit against the Department," Georgeson told WRW on Dec 19 The law suit alleges that the City Ci-ty is damaging Mono Lake in and irreversible ir-reversible way. The law suit has been moved from Mono County to Alpine County adjoining Mono County on the north The trial date has been set for March 24, 1980, and City attorneys are eoing to seek to broaden the case to adjudicate ad-judicate all water rights including federal water rights in Mono Basin, Georgeson told WRW on Dec. 19. The California water establishment is up in arms about what it regards as the task force playing fast and loose with the City's established water rights. Lin-ng Lin-ng up on the City's side in the controversy con-troversy are MWD, the Water Agency of California's Kern County, the California Water Resources Association, Associa-tion, the Association of California Water Agencies, among others. To assume, as the task force did, that any water deficiency can be made up by MWD is an error, Robert P. Will, general counsel of MWD, notified the task force on Oct. 1. MWD is facing a 400,000-500,000 acre-foot acre-foot shortfall in the years immediately ahead because of the completion of the Central Arizona Project in the 1980's, with resultant cutback in the amount of Colorado River water available to MWD, and a possible further cutback as a result of litigation now before the U.S. Supreme Court concerning Indian claims to more water for Indian lands lying along the Colorado River, Will underscored. Louis B. Allen, Jr., of the Association of California Water Agencies, warned at a Sept. 24 hearing in Los Angeles if the state legislature starts tampering with Los Angeles' water rights "it could also do so with regard to every other water right in California. The precedent prece-dent that this would establish would, in our judgment, be nothing short of a disaster of major proportions," he stressed, with major impacts throughout the state and West. The entire Los Angeles City Council backed Georgeson's opposition to the task force report, and Rep. James C. Corman, D-Calif., of Los Angeles County Coun-ty sent a letter of protest about the task force's interference with the City's perfected water rights to Interior Secretary Cecil D. Andrus on Nov. 27 ; it When washing by hand, use mild soap and do not twist or wring. Roll it in a towel. To dry a quilt, tumble it dry or hang it on a line. If you can, dry the quilt by spreading it out flat on a clean sheet. To store a quilt, roll it up in a clean sheet. Do not use plastic; it does not breathe. 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F ... .. v . . , THE LAND BRIDGE that has emerged between Negit Island in Mono Lake in California because of the Lake's shrinkage, due to water diver- carried 23 co-signers, mainly Southern California Congressmen, The City flatly flat-ly rejects the $223 million price tag on the cost of stabilizing Mono Lake along the line of the task force recommendations; recommenda-tions; it claims the cost would be $963 million. sions, causing the Coyotes and other predators to prey on the birds nesting on Negit Island. |