I’ve been thinking about Mono Lake. I haven’t traveled much lately so I thought it would be a good time to write about my visit there last summer. In April, my friend Peter invited me to attend a dinner and auction put on by the non-profit Friends of the Kern River. I successfully bid on his donation of a guided canoe trip on the Lake (in addition to some interesting books about the area and other useful items). So, in conjunction with a visit to my friend Joyce who lives not far from the Lake, Juliet and I drove east across Tioga Pass through Yosemite to spend an August weekend. Mono Lake was the highlight.

Located on the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada mountains at an elevation of nearly 6.500’, Mono Lake is an inland sea hundreds of thousands of years old. The water is extremely saline and as a result of fresh water springs emerging from the lake bottom and mixing with the salty water, interesting formations called tufa, made of limestone, are produced. They appear other worldly.  The water teems with brine shrimp and alkali flies that feed millions of migratory and nesting birds.

Native Americans populated the area over millennia. In the mid to late 1800’s, the mountains were mined for gold. Ranches and farms were established. Starting in the 1930’s, the City of Los Angeles, located 330 miles south of Mono Lake, began diverting water from the Lake’s tributary fresh water streams. This resulted in an epic legal battle that has lasted ever since! Limited water resources have always been a problem for California. The siphoning of Mono Lake water to meet the needs of LA jeopardized the fragility of the Lake’s ecosystem, threatening the food chain that included the brine shrimp, alkali flies, birds, and other wildlife. By the early 1980’s, the Lake had lost forty-five vertical feet and half of its volume through water exports to LA. As the result of this depletion, the tufa became increasingly visible, and ultimately, some stand far from the shrunken Lake on dry land.

This dire situation led to the formation of the Mono Lake Committee, a coalition of locals, students, scientists, fishers, hunters, lawyers and politicians to mobilize preservation of the Lake. The outreach of the Committee concentrated on both conservation and community engagement, particularly in Los Angeles, thereby creating a strategic alliance for acceptance of greater conservation.

In 1983, the California Supreme Court addressed the conflict between public and private ownership of natural resources. Under the public trust doctrine, the Court determined that the State had certain obligations regarding, among other things, navigable waterways. It held that the State must balance the protection of public trust values at Mono Lake with the legitimate water needs of Los Angeles. However, the Court did not provide any guidance about how much water was allowed to be diverted.

Much litigation followed. In 1994, the State of California amended the city’s water licenses to reduce the diversions and restore the Lake and dried creeks. Los Angeles could continue to divert regulated amounts of water so long as the scientifically determined benchmark level of Mono Lake at 6,392’ was met by 2014. The City and the Mono Basin advocates resolved to work together toward increased water conservation, alternative water sources, and the restoration of the Mono Basin. Unfortunately, due to increased drought in California as a result of climate change, the water level has not reached its optimal level and, in fact, decreased to below 6,377’. Sadly, given these conditions, it is unlikely the water will reach its optimal level.

The above is my very condensed and over-simplified version of these complex events. If you are interested, the link below is to an excellent and very readable history on which I relied in my account. My apologies to those experts who may be reading this for any mistakes I may have made.  https://lawreview.law.ucdavis.edu/sites/g/files/dgvnsk15026/files/2025-06/58-5_Ryan.pdf

Happy New Year!