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Mono Lake Vs. Los AngelesState Senator John Garamendi renewed his fight to save Mono Lake by introducing a resolution calling upon the city of Los Angeles to “cease its environmentally destructive water diversions from the Mono Basin/'Garamendi's resolution, SCR 79, was developed in close cooperation with David Gaines of the Mono Lake Committee and Mono County supervisor Joan Green. It declares Mono Lake to be “a unique and valuable natural resource of the people of California” and requests Los Angeles to immediately begin implementation of the final recommendations made by the Interagency Task Force, set up in 1979 to study the Mono Lake situation.“The time to save Mono Lake is right now while there is still plenty of , surplus water available in Southern California to meet Los Angeles* needs and make ‘Plan P' feasible,” said Garamendi. “Further delay on this matter may prove fatal to the Task Force plan and thus to the Lake itself. Mono Lake is about to follow Owen's Lake as the second ecological victim of the Los Angeles Aqueduct. I feel it's time we learned from our own history. Let's not repeat the tragic mistakes of the past.”The crisis situation at Mono Lake has been escalating for the past several years. The Los Angeles Aqueduct annually diverts 100,000 acre feet of water that otherwise would flow into the lake via tributary streams. As a result, the lake’s level has fallen over forty feet since the diversions began in 1941. The receding waters have exposed a landbridge to Negit Island in the lake’s center, creating a pathway for predators threatening the state's largest California Gull rookery.Implementation of the Task Force recommendations would reduce Los Angeles' annual water diversions by 85,000 acre feet and raise Mono Lake to its 1970 level, an increase of 15 vertical feet. The increase would be sufficient to cover the Negit Island landbridge, protect the gull rookery, and cover the acres of exposed lake-bed along the shoreline which produce air-polluting alkali dust.The cost of providing replacement water would be shared by the federal, state, and local governments. Los Angeles would also agree to initiate water reclamation programs and additional water conservation to meet its future water needs
Newspaper Details
Folsom Telegraph
Folsom, California, US
Wed, May 21, 1980
Page 1
Full Page
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Hsiu L.
