Remember "Save Mono Lake" ? This month they celebrate its recovery.

[Kadie]

IT'S RISING AND HEALTHY: Three decades ago, a bunch of college students reported on and worried about the fate of Mono Lake. This month, they celebrated its recovery.
Jane Kay, Chronicle Environment Writer

Saturday, July 29, 2006


(07-29) 04:00 PDT Mono Lake, Mono County -- Thirty years ago, a dozen students from Stanford University, UC Davis and elsewhere camped at ancient Mono Lake for more than two months, conducting the first ecological survey of California's largest lake, which was dying as a result of massive water diversions to Los Angeles.

This month, the same group -- now college professors, government scientists, an inventor, a physician and high school teachers, all in their early 50s -- returned for a historic reunion at the million-year-old lake that once inspired Californians to slap "Save Mono Lake'' bumper stickers on their '70s vans.

Today the lake is saved -- rising and healthy.

The group's 1976 study of birds, insects, phytoplankton, salinity and hydrology has been recognized as the scientific underpinning of the California Supreme Court's 1983 ruling that the state must protect natural resources such as Mono Lake under the state Constitution's public trust doctrine. That decision ultimately saved the lake from the kind of water grab that in the 1920s turned Southern California's Owens Lake into a 110-square-mile salt flat.

"Everything we did was later repeated with more rigor,'' said Jeff Burch, an engineer and inventor for Agilent Technologies in Palo Alto, who came to the reunion at Mono Lake County Park. "But we pointed to the direction that policy needed to change or otherwise you'd have this train wreck, with the Mono Lake ecosystem collapsing.''


more...
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/07/29/MNGD5K7V581.DTL




1976 -- The original researchers made a pyramid at their Mono Lake campsite: On top is Elliot Burch; second row, from left, are Christine Weigen and Gayle Dana; third row, Tom Wainwright, visitor Bill Syme and Brett Engstrom; bottom row, Bob Loeffler, Jeff Burch, David Winkler and Dave Herbst. Jeff Robbins is standing at left. Mono Lake Committee photo by David Gaines


2006 -- This year's pyramid: on top, Elliot Burch; second row, left to right, Gayle Dana and Christine Weigen; third row, Keith Otsuki, Connie Lovejoy, Brett Engstrom, Jeff Robbins; bottom row, Tom Wainwright, Bob Loeffler, Dave Winkler, Jeff Burch and Dave Herbst. Photo by Geoffrey McQuilkin


A trickle of water flowed into Mono Lake over the dried lake bottom in 1982. Chronicle file photo by Jerry Telfer


Lisbeth Schioenning of Thousand Oaks (Ventura County) photographs the tufa formations at sunset on Mono Lake. Because of a court decision in 1983, sufficient fresh water again flows into the lake, raising its level, reducing its salinity and restoring aquatic, avian and plant life to the ecosystem. Chronicle photo by Kat Wade

[Suich]

1. What a cool story! Thanks for posting it, Kadie!

Farther down in the article, in "The saved lake" part, the 1st sentence says the lake has.....reached the 6,385 ft. level. I don't get it...is that how deep it is?

[Kadie]

3. Above sea level...

snip...
Los Angeles originally was prohibited from taking any water from the Mono Basin until the lake's level reached an elevation of 6,377 feet above sea level. Los Angeles today is allowed to take 16,500 acre-feet of water a year -- or 16 percent of its original diversion, a restriction that will remain until the lake reaches an elevation of 6,392 feet.

The saved lake

Last week, the lake reached the 6,385-foot level. In eight more years, it's expected to rise 7 more feet to reach the target level.


:hi:

[Lisa]

2. that's such a great photo!

Thanks so much for the update! I'll show it to my water resources course.

[Kadie]

7. You are welcome.

The photos are great. The whole story gives me hope.

[JitterbugPerfume]

4. thanks for the ray of hope

in troubled times


those pics are inspiring

[XemaSab]

5. Classic!

K&R

[niyad]

6. a belated THANK YOU for posting this--a ray of hope, indeed. somewhere

I still have my "save mono lake" sticker and button. in the 80's, used to go past there a lot in my travels--and each time, I just wanted to cry. I even asked the powers-that-be at mammoth why they didn't just truck all that damned snow to the lake and dump it (well, yeah, apart from whatever they put on the roads, but still. . . . )

[Kadie]

10. You are Welcome

:hi:

[WillyT]

8. Simply Beautiful !!!

Thank you for this fanatastic news !!!

:bounce::woohoo::bounce:

[Kadie]

9. Awesome pictures.

:hi:

[Cleita]

11. It shows what can be done with persistence and dogged

stubborness. Maybe we can save this planet after all.

[Clarkie1]

12. I read about this in the S.F. Chronicle yesterday.

So nice to hear an environmental success story.

[tyedyeto]

13. I remember...

It was about the same time as getting 'Wild and Scenic' river status for the Tuolumne River on the other side of the Sierras.

The were many environmental actists working for many causes back then.

On edit:

Two months ago I headed home from a trip to CA. Drove over Sonora Pass and on down 395. Stopped for a while at Mono Lake to reflect on how beautiful it is today.

[struggle4progress]

14. I lived around there in the 1970s: it briefly seemed like the ...

... Owens Valley water war of the 1920s was going to be replayed after LA constructed its second aqueduct.

... People continued to pour into Los Angeles, and several years of drought in the 1920s slowed the aqueduct's flow. To compensate, the city began pumping groundwater directly from the aquifer beneath Owens Valley. Starved of water, local farms and ranches failed. Businesses followed. Some Owens Valley farmers sued Los Angeles and lost. Others began taking water direct ly from the aqueduct. The city countered by buying valley property in a checkerboard fashion-purchasing one farm but not the one next to it, which pitted neighbor against neighbor.

Owens Valley residents took matters into their own hands at 1:30 A.M. on May 21, 1924. A caravan of cars with about 40 men set out from Bishop, the largest town in Owens Valley, headed 6o miles south, and just north of Lone Pine, dynamited the aqueduct's concrete canal. Six months later, a number of Owens Valley residents, led by local banker Mark Watterson, seized the aqueduct's Alabama Gates spillway, near Lone Pine and opened its gates, sending the precious liquid back into the Owens River.

Mulholland was furious. He dispatched two carloads of gun-toting city detectives to break up the siege. Trying to prevent bloodshed, the Owens Valley sheriff warned them not to start trouble, saying, "I don't believe you will live to tell the tale." The detectives backed down ... http://www.mindfully.org/Water/Owens-Lake-WaterOct02.htm

[Control-Z]

15. The last time I saw Mono Lake

it was like a giant salt flat. This is just beautiful to see - and inspiring. Wow!

[Vanje]

16. Someone missing

The late birdman,David Gaines of LeeVining, who started the whole thing rolling , and so rocked the world.

[lostnfound]

17. Damn activist courts, how dare they.

Surely the Bushites will read of this situation and decide to sell it off to a private venture capitalist... Can't have hippies celebrating a sucess story.

But they'd have to read... Shhh! Don't say a word.
;)

[ForrestGump]

18. Excellent!!

And I love the two pyamid photos, 30 years apart.

Great news. :D

[EFerrari]

19. So great! LOL! I didn't know we made a difference

:)