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Photo: Vane

In the early hours of Tuesday, Aug. 21, birders and biologists gathered with binoculars, tripods and scopes for a singular birding event: Fall Big Day at Owens Lake. Eastern Sierra Audubon Society (ESAS) educator and field trip leader Mike Prather has organized the Big Day, a bird count in both spring and fall, since the early 1980s. In that time he and other ESAS members have seen a dramatic change at Owens Lake as the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) has brought water back in an effort to mitigate dust, encouraging the return of thousands of migrating birds that once used the lake as a stopover on their long journey north and south.

On this year’s Big Day, a single group led by DWP Biologist Jeff Nordin counted 10,000 birds of 12 species, including American Avocets, Red-necked Phalaropes, Least and Western Sandpipers, Horned Larks, Mallards, White-faced Ibis, and Snowy Plovers, in only three of the lake’s shallow flood ponds known as “T cells.”

Not since the early 1900s, before the diversion of the lower Owens River into the Los Angeles Aqueduct drained the lake almost completely of water, have residents and visitors witnessed such a spectacle of birds. The last recorded viewing of this kind occurred in 1917, when premiere zoologist Joseph Grinnell visited the shores of the lake in September and noted a spectacular conflagration of birds: “Avocets, phalaropes, ducks, [and] large flocks of shorebirds in flight over the water in the distance, wheeling about show en masse, now silvery now dark, against the gray-blue of the water. There must literally be thousands of birds in sight of this spot,” he wrote.

Little did Grinnell know, that by the 1920s only a 30 square mile brine pool would remain to mark what was once a 100 square mile lake.

Over the next decades the bird population dwindled, then virtually disappeared, while residents of Inyo County began to suffer a toxic mix of arsenic, cadmium, nickel and sulfates in the windblown dust from the dry lakebed. Then, in 1999, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) mandated that the LADWP begin a dust mitigation project in order to meet federal air quality standards. The DWP reached an agreement with the local Great Basin Unified Air Pollution Control District (GBUAPCD), and in 2001 began channeling water back into the lake in contained “T cells.”

“The first water came on in November,” Mike Prather recalled. “But the DWP did test plots beforehand. Algae began to grow in the plots, then came brine shrimp, then birds. So we anticipated huge numbers of birds to return.” Prather’s and others’ expectations were met immediately. The bird population at Owens Lake has continued to grow over the past decade of dust mitigation, with a record 74,511 birds of 81 different species counted this spring. “It’s the biggest wildlife spectacle in Inyo County,” Prather said.

A Snowy Plover, usually found on the coast. (Photo: Ali Sheehey)

Prather originally conceived the Big Day count in order to provide accurate data to the DWP, California Department of Fish and Game (CDFG), Audubon Society, and State Lands Commission for the preservation of the bird habitat at the lake. The technique for counting so many thousands of birds in a single day is simple: “We divide by species, then we get a scope and start at one end of the birds and get a feel for what 20, 50, 100 looks like,” Prather explained. “Then we start ‘chunking’ using this visual estimation. This gets you within 10 percent up or down. We try to be conservative.”

Numbers at spring and fall Big Days have varied between 40,000-70,000 in recent years, but Prather noted that this flux has much to do with weather and timing along different species’ migratory routes. “You have to be careful with numbers,” he said. “We’re trying to focus on surveying habitats.” To that end, the Big Day not only makes a count of birds, but also maps where birds are on each cell, creating a model for different species’ habitat preferences based on factors like water depth, vegetation, and salinity.

This data has been used in the DWP management of aquatic habitats at Owens Lake for many years, but recently the data has also become an integral part of a new Owens Lake Master Plan created through a collaborative process between more than 60 organizations and interest groups including the ESAS, DWP, CDFG, the District, Inyo County, and the Owens Valley Indian Water Commission. The Master Plan, which DWP Public Relations Manager Chris Plakos said will hopefully be finalized by the end of this year, focuses on habitat, dust control, renewable energy, public access and recreation, and water conservation. Once the Plan is completed, the different agencies involved will have a framework to guide them in future projects on the lake.

One of the major concerns of the DWP addressed in the Master Plan is how to continue the dust mitigation project with less water. The project has grown from the initial 13 and a half square miles of shallow flooding in Phase 1, to the current 36 and a quarter square miles in Phase 8, and currently uses 95,000 acre-feet of water, according to Plakos. “How to save some of this water is not just a concern of the DWP, but of the whole state and country,” he said.

While saving water for the DWP, which provides water to a population of about 4 million in Los Angeles, may be a controversial subject in this area, water conservation at the lake is also a shared goal of the ESAS. One might think that preserving the aquatic bird habitat and conserving water used for dust mitigation at Owen’s Lake would be a contradiction. Not so, said Andrea Jones, Audubon California’s Important Bird Areas Director. “One of the goals of the Master Plan is to find more efficient ways to use water and still maintain the bird habitat,” she said. “The DWP will explore new ways to do dust control, and the Master Plan will make it easier to be innovative and make a higher efficiency mosaic, a richer habitat mix, while still maintaining that baseline habitat the birds need.”

“It’s a highly engineered and manipulated habitat,” said ESAS President Peter Pumphrey. “For a while we fought that, then we came around to using that engineering to our advantage.” DWP biologists and ESAS members have been studying what exactly each species of birds on the lake needs, including water level, salinity, topography, and vegetation. This means that no matter how the T cells shift and change in coming years as part of the dust mitigation project, the DWP will always maintain the same baseline and variety of habitat for the birds. This also means that the DWP may be able to use less water in the habitats if, for instance, data shows that certain species can thrive with less water and more vegetated land, or if species prefer water with higher salinity, which tends to evaporate more slowly, requiring less water use overall.

“It’s exciting to be doing this,” Pumphrey said. “The future of conservation is not in preserving what was there, but in finding ways to enhance what’s there now in areas that have been damaged.”

As for whether the ESAS might one day request the DWP expand the bird habitat to support the numbers that may have visited Owens Lake in the past, Pumphrey said, “Our position is that we’re satisfied with the Master Plan guarantee of no net loss of existing habitat. But I can see where it could be possible that the habitat baseline could actually grow in the future, as we figure out how to do dust control in a habitat-friendly way.” Said Chris Plakos in response, “If the proposal was made to the City [Los Angeles] to expand the bird habitat, that proposal would certainly be looked at.”

Until then, scientists and birders will continue to gather data, and marvel at the sheer number and variety of birds at Owens Lake each spring and fall Big Day. “It’s a haunting place,” Pumphrey concluded. “When I first saw it 20-some years ago I thought, ‘that’s where Owens Lake used to be.’ Now, I think it’s beautiful.”

Agency changes tactic in Owens Lake dust control dealings and elsewhere

In recent months, while the Los Angeles Dept. of Water and Power began litigation against the Mammoth Community Water District (“LADWP sues MCWD,” The Sheet, Jan. 28), it was also in the process of appealing what it claims are new requirements by the Great Basin Unified Air Pollution Control District (GBUAPCD) for dust mitigation efforts on Owens Lake.

“There is no direct connection, but it is strange to me that they’re litigious with both agencies,” said GBUAPCD Air Pollution Control Officer Ted Schade. “In the past they have been reluctant to work with us but have realized they have an obligation and have been reasonable. In the past we wouldn’t hear from their attorneys; now everything is run by their attorneys, which is unfortunate.”

Schade said there is no doubt, at least in the case of LADWP’s current issues with Owens Lake, that the recent protests are related to the current economy.

“They [LADWP] have incurred a lot of expenses over the years [in the Owens Valley],” Schade said. “They have had no significant rate increases and can’t right now because of the economy. If you can’t increase revenue, then you are forced to cut costs.”

Since people in the Owens Valley don’t vote in Los Angeles, looking for cost savings here first would make sense, Schade said.

According to a press release issued by LADWP on Feb. 23, it is “concerned that we are being required to control dust on areas that are at higher lake elevations than pre-Los Angeles Aqueduct diversion levels and thus caused by nature or others. We are concerned that as we near the 96% control level and have done all that we have been asked, believing that we are near the end, suddenly there seems to be no end. Simply put, LADWP believes we are now being required to mitigate against the effects of nature or others for which we have no responsibility.”

The release also stated that LADWP is concerned that it is only allowed to use three methods of mitigation: water, gravel and vegetation. It calls upon GBUAPCD to develop new dust control methods and scolds it for not having done so already.

Schade, however, pointed out that LADWP has full control over what it uses to control the dust.

“Air quality regulators have no obligation to develop air pollution controls for air polluters,” Schade said in a recent newspaper column. “If the LADWP is unsatisfied with the current approved controls, they have a responsibility to their ratepayers to develop new, effective controls. It is Great Basin’s responsibility to review and approve successful controls.”

In 1997, LADWP had originally committed to mitigating 45 square miles of the Owens Lake with the knowledge that GBUAPCD would continue to monitor the amount of area that required dust control. At the time, GBUAPCD had estimated that controls would be required on about 46.5 square miles of the dried lakebed, according to Shade. The dust is an effect generated by the City of LA’s water gathering activities and is the largest single source of particulate matter (PM) air pollution in the country.

“Mitigation is done when dust levels have been reduced enough to meet federal standards,” Schade explained of the original agreement. Recently, the GBUAPCD reevaluated the square mileage needing mitigation and determined that in fact, 47.9 square miles needs mitigation in order to meet standards. The announcement of the new number is what triggered DWP’s appeal.

Currently, LADWP has mitigated 39.5 square miles and 90 percent of the dust has been controlled.

“We’re getting close,” Schade expressed, “so we’re scratching our head at why they are balking now.”

The cost to mitigate an additional 3 square miles (to attain the 47.9 square miles the GBUAPCD now requires) would cost anywhere between $50 million and $75 million, depending on what DWP chooses to use as mitigation, Schade said. Shallow flooding of the area is the cheapest method at approximately $15 million per square mile, Schade estimated, versus approximately $26 million per square mile for gravel. Vegetation mitigation is somewhere in between. The shallow flooding method is what DWP has used for the majority of the 39.5 square miles it has already mitigated.

The issue with shallow flooding is it requires continued maintenance.

“With wetting you have to continue because water evaporates,” Schade explained. Also, by using water to control the dust on much of the 39.5 square miles already mitigated, DWP has created wildlife habitats that according to Schade, it must now maintain.

“While gravel is the most expensive initially, it requires the least maintenance,” he said. “They could just walk away from it.”

This cost would be in addition to the $5.6 million fine that DWP paid to the Owens Valley because it missed a 2010 deadline. According to the agreement, DWP was expected to have approximately 43 square miles of mitigation completed by the end of 2010. It failed to reach that number for various reasons and had to pay the fine, which is being used for clean air projects in the Eastern Sierra.

Whatever the motive, monetary or otherwise, DWP filed an appeal to GBUAPCD’s new requirements in December 2011. Last week, it attempted to ram the process through more quickly by filing a motion to sue the California Air Resources Board for its required appeal process, claiming the amount of time the process would take would cause DWP irreparable harm in the form of attorney’s fees. This, following on the heels of DWP comments to GBUAPCD that the cost of attorney’s fees pale in comparison to what it costs to mitigate the lakebed.

The motion was denied in court and the appeal will go through the normal timeline and process, which Schade believes will last through mid-May.

MCWD and LADWP update

Since The Sheet’s last report on MCWD/LADWP dealings, LADWP has filed a second lawsuit against the Mammoth Water District. This one, said MCWD General Manager Greg Norby, seeks to invalidate the District’s 2010 Urban Water Management Plan, a standard planning document required by the state. Both lawsuits are based upon the underlying issue that LADWP does not believe MCWD has legal rights to surface water for Mammoth Creek.

Norby and other MCWD representatives will meet with LADWP again on March 28 to discuss broad, long-term goals. If they can agree on some bigger picture draft settlement principles, then Norby said, MCWD would look at entering into a tolling agreement, which would put the lawsuits on hold while the two agencies continue to talk.

“But there’s no point in a tolling agreement if our long-term vision isn’t somewhere in the same realm,” Norby said.

In regard to the bigger, Eastern Sierra picture, Norby said that the area needs unified representation up and down the valley. He referred to all of the different water agencies currently dealing with LADWP, including Inyo County’s groundwater pumping, the Lower Owens rewatering, and Mono Lake, as well as the aforementioned Owens Lake.

“We all go it alone even though we have a common set of overriding interests,” Norby observed. “The closest thing we’ve got to unified representation is the IRWMP (Integrated Regional Water Management Program).”

While Norby thinks this program, which does represent Inyo and Mono county water agencies, can grow into the representation needed, he pointed out that currently, LADWP sits at the IRWMP table but hasn’t actually joined the group by signing the MOU.

But pay me $6.5 million while you’re at it

When there’s a delay, one pays.

For the City of Los Angeles, a delay in the implementation of dust controls mandated by the Great Basin Air Pollution Control District has resulted in a $6.5 million settlement.

According to Great Basin Pollution Control Officer Ted Schade, who negotiated the settlement, the District ordered the Los Angeles Dept. of Water and Power to implement dust mitigation measures over 13 square miles of Owens Dry Lake in 2008.

LADWP had two years to comply.

However, by October 2010, only 10 square miles of mitigation had been completed.

The $6.5 million settlement gives the LADWP until December 2013 to complete the remaining 3 square miles.

The $6.5 million is intended to be used for  local clean air projects to offset potential excess dust emissions generated by the deadline extension.

Preference will be given to projects in the southern Inyo County areas most affected by the delay.

LADWP has spent almost $1 billion performing dust mitigation and rewatering on roughly 40 square miles of Owens Lake. Under the new deal, LADWP will be allowed to “transition” three square miles of existing shallow flooding to a mix of vegetation, some flooding and gravel cover. The water saved will be routed to the new 3.1 square miles that are to be controlled. Projected cost of the endeavor: $110 million.

Within the past year, LADWP, the subject of intense environmental scrutiny for its water diversion practices during the past several decades, joined with a consortium of 60 local, state and federal agencies, organizations and various advocacy groups to develop a master plan for Owens Lake’s future.

“The LADWP has worked diligently to implement dust control measures on Owens Lake since 2000,” commented Schade. “Dust storms blowing off the lakebed have been dramatically reduced.” New LADWP General Manager Ron Nichols, who recently took over for former GM David Nahai, echoed Schade’s sentiment, issuing a statement saying LADWP is “pleased that we have been able to work with Great Basin to come up with a solution that allows us to meet our dust mitigation commitments on Owens Lake.” He went on to praise dust reduction and improvements to wildlife habitats achieved during the last 10 years.

-Lunch/Press Release

Owens Valley Committee presents follow-up to original film

When it was released in 1974, “Chinatown” used William Mulholland’s greatest coup, the construction of the Owens Valley aqueduct, which provided Los Angeles with a steady source of drinking water, as part of its plot line. The film itself (and most of its use of the so-called “water wars” story) was largely fictitious, but on the 2009 Centennial Collection DVD release, the movie’s original studio, Paramount, thought enough of the underlying subject matter to produce three new documentary shorts about the background, aftermath and other aspects of the Eastern Sierra and its decades-long love/hate relationship with the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.

Earlier this month at the Sierra Club Range of Light chapter’s January meeting, current Owens Valley Committee (OVC) president Mark Bagley (himself a Sierra Club member), screened two of the three films as part of a presentation looking at the state of the water wars 35 years after “Chinatown.”

One of the Eastern Sierra’s more prominent activist groups, the OVC has been heavily involved in water issues since the late 1980s, and is well versed in the history. Bagley, who is seen several times in the documentaries, started with the short on the aqueduct’s history, which features among others, Carol Mulholland, granddaughter of William, and “Chinatown” screenwriter Robert Towne, who visits the aqueduct for the first time since he wrote the movie and acts as something of a guide.

Viewers are taken back to the waterway as a concept in the late 1800s, then through the construction between 1911 and 1913 that routed water via the Owens River to the intake between Independence and Lone Pine. Next is the tapping of the Mono Basin in 1940 and the second “redundant” aqueduct in 1970, which ran alongside the original and nearly doubled water capacity.

After the first film, Bagley spoke in more detail about the 1970 California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) passage, and its impact on a 1972 court ruling on an Inyo County suit against the City of Los Angeles, in which the judge determined that, while the aqueduct itself pre-dated CEQA, the actual project to fill it with water was subject to a CEQA analysis, one of the first major victories for Eastern Sierra interests.

On one hand, construction of the aqueduct is an engineering marvel, “a long black tube feeding the city,” as Towne observed. Gravity fed, it utilizes no pumps of any kind along its 233-mile route to southern California. Its effects on the life and livelihood of the Eastern Sierra have, Bagley thinks, been equally monumental. “As a gravity flow system, technologically it’s great,” he said. “As an environmental disaster, it’s equally great.”

Also interviewed in the documentaries are LA Councilman Tom LaBonge and “Western Times and Water Wars” author John Walton, as well as LADWP engineers, PR spokesman Chris Plakos and former CEO David Nahai.

As illustrated in the first film, Mulholland’s name may be somewhat tainted, but most of those interviewed didn’t consider him part of any skullduggery. (One of his more ruthless aqueduct associates, Fred Eaton, is perhaps more likely to have manipulated things in his favor.) Even the OVC’s Mike Prather indicated Mulholland’s interest was “water and the good of the city.”

Carol Mulholland goes to great lengths to point out that the history is “a complex story,” full of “shades of gray.” The good guys don’t always wear white and the bad guys aren’t always dressed in black. The movie’s perception by mass audiences has also colored public thinking. “Chinatown” and its detective story likely overshadowed the backstory of the water grab. “It’s been accepted as a historic document,” she opined, “but it’s not an accurate depiction of history.”

Towne echoed her remarks, saying he set the story in the 1930s, well after the aqueduct project, and only used the real players as models for his fictional versions. For example, one character is written as a hybrid of Mulholland and Eaton.

The second of the three films examines “The Aftermath” of the aqueduct and the effect it had on the Eastern Sierra in particular. Private owners were offered triple or more what their property was worth, allowing LADWP to amass a huge amount of land up and down U.S. 395. A few holdouts still remain, including Bishop rancher Stan Matlick, whose family still owns its homestead and property. (Another is the Valentine property in Mono County, which LADWP has coveted all along.)

For all its technical simplicity, the aqueduct’s quenching of LA’s immense thirst has led to pumps being used to pull groundwater for irrigating parched meadows, and enormous dust storms emanating from the now dry Owens Lake. LADWP is rewatering the lake, but it may never return to anything close to its original state.

The 2009 Centennial edition of “Chinatown,” which includes the documentaries, is available at Amazon.com.

A glitch in the Department of Water and Power’s plan to turn Owens Lake into a huge solar panel project made the front page of www.latimes.com today. The Green Sheet reported on the Owens Lake solar project in its April 2010, Earth Day issue. Click here for a direct link to the LA Times story, which explains why caustic mud has caused DWP to scale the project back from 80 acres to 5 acres:

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-solar-owens-20100706,0,3851625.story

Click here for the April story in The Green Sheet:

http://thesheetnews.com/archives/2236

The Bishop area’s Chamber of Commerce met Thursday at Whiskey Creek to listen to a presentation from Gene Coufal, representing the Los Angeles Department of Water Power’s (LADWP) solar array project on Owens Lake.

A pilot project has been approved to cover 616 acres of the lake area with solar panels. If the project shows signs of long-term viability, it could lead to a solar array covering thousands of acres.

At the meeting, Coufal emphasized that the project is still in the very preliminary stages. The main obstacle will be trying to get about 30 different groups on the same page, which all have vested interests in the project. These groups include government agencies, environmentalists, ranchers and other entities in the Owens Valley area. Dust mitigation on the lake bed, water conservation and investing in renewable energy sources are the three main objectives.

Since July of 1998, LADWP has been working on complying with dust mitigation measures outlined in the Memorandum of Agreement reached by the City with the Great Basin Air Pollution Control District. Coufal said that meeting deadlines for the implementation of control measures has been the priority for the past 12 years. The measures include covering the lake with shallow flooding, gravel and managed vegetation. But these strategies have resulted in a hodgepodge of short-term, expensive solutions.

Now, LADWP, the state, and agencies such as the Audubon Society and the Department of Fish & Game, want to draft a plan for a more long-term solution for the future health of the Owens Lake area.

As L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigos has announced that the City will be phasing out coal power by 2020, LADWP has been investigating renewable sources of energy. Coal power currently meets 40 percent of L.A.’s energy needs. Replacing that amount with renewable energy will be a huge task, requiring a massive area to install energy-producing technology—technology like photovoltaic solar panels.

That’s where Owens Lake comes in. The only locations that met the certain criteria for prime energy-producing land were Owens Lake and an area south of Independence and east of the river. While some people have asked why L.A. doesn’t just install solar panels on all the rooftops in the city, Coufal said the Owens Lake area has 20 percent more energy-producing potential than Los Angeles.

Proponents of the Owens Lake solar plan say the project will conserve a huge amount of water annually. The idea is that solar panels would replace shallow flooding as a dust mitigation measure. Currently, 68,000 acre feet of water are pumped into the lake, with 27,000 more acre feet scheduled to be added April 1. Researchers believe solar panels would dampen the wind enough to prevent the massive dust storms characteristic of the area. If the pilot project proves this to be true, panels could replace water to help the dust-ridden area comply with federal air quality regulations.

Before LADWP can install the project, more research must be done on the potential environmental impacts. Coufal said no matter what, the project will have impacts on the environment, so the best mitigation strategies must also be drafted.

“This is not a project where the City is trying to pull wool over somebody’s eyes,” Coufal said, referring to L.A.’s unfavorable history of controversial Owens Valley projects.

He said DWP is truly trying to gather as much information and input as possible—from researchers, Owens Valley residents, and agencies—in order to ensure the best strategy for success, benefiting both the environment and peoples’ energy needs.

Non-profit “citizen action group” Owens Valley Committee (OVC) filed a lawsuit Feb. 9 against the California Department of Fish and Game (DFG) challenging the “adequacy” of the DFG’s Hatchery and Stocking Program Environmental Impact Report (EIR).

A press release from OVC said the lawsuit “focuses on the group’s concerns about the effects of groundwater pumping used to supply DFG’s Black Rock Rearing Ponds and Fish Springs Hatchery,” both of which are located in the Owens Valley.

“Our concern is with the over-pumping to supply the Black Rock and Fish Springs facilities,” said OVC board member Mark Bagley. “Those facilities operated for decades on natural spring flows. Since excessive groundwater pumping by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power dried up the natural springs in the early 1970s, groundwater pumping has supplied those facilities.” He added that the annual average pumping since 1973 to supply the facilities has exceeded the prior natural spring flows by more than 6,000 acre-feet per year at each facility. Water that flows through the Black Rock and Fish Springs hatchery facilities flows directly into the Los Angeles aqueduct system and is exported to Los Angeles.

“There is no data to suggest that the excess flows to the hatchery facilities have provided for increased hatchery production. The data, however, do demonstrate that the excessive pumping has significant environmental effects,” Bagley said. “We’re certainly not trying to shut down the hatcheries. They play an important role in the local economy and in DFG’s statewide hatchery program.”

The OVC lawsuit seeks a court-ordered invalidation of the EIR certification based on four main assertions: 1.) The EIR uses a 2004-2008 baseline, and claims that “only impacts above and beyond the impacts during the 2004-2008 period” will be significant; 2.) The suit says the EIR “fails to provide sufficient detail regarding the foreseeable impacts that will arise from continued groundwater pumping. 3.) The EIR doesn’t include feasible alternatives, such as a plan for groundwater monitoring, and 4.) The DFG failed to adequately consider some of the public comments submitted during the environmental review process.

The EIR, which was certified on Jan. 11, is the first CEQA analysis ever done on the hatchery and stocking program.