WATERSHED MOMENT?
Published in the November 8, 2025 edition.
It’s okay to take a victory lap and celebrate a recent and quite rare “win” for Mono Lake over the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. A little splash of reality, however, is also in order.
The “landmark” decision driving the happy dance around the lake was the LADWP commissioners’ Oct. 28 decision to expand a recycled water plant and declare the drinking water from the “toilet to tap” facility means LADWP will not have to import Mono Lake Basin water. When LADWP actually stops diverting Mono Basin water (and whether that move helps restore the health of the lake) will take years to determine.
Getting LADWP to admit taking between 4,000 and 16,000 acre feet of water from the Mono Basin won’t dry up water faucets in LA is more significant then it sounds. For decades, water warriors in Inyo and Mono counties have asked, strongly suggested, urged and demanded that when LADWP cuts water use in LA or expands its LA basin water sources, it should also reduce exports from the Eastern Sierra. That direct linkage was never made, until this recent decision.
Absolutely, that development is a solid win.
A solid public relations win.
For both LADWP and the indefatigable Mono Lake Committee (MLC) and the state’s environmental movement.
The committee has mounted an impressive, multi-pronged PR and pressure campaign to spotlight that the lake is still about 9 feet below the target level set by the State Water Resources Control Board in1994. The message has been LADWP should stop exporting any Mono Basin water until that mandated lake level is achieved.
The committee has initiated legal challenges to that 1994 ruling. Well-publicized hearings in front of powerful state agencies put the Mono Lake issue back in the public eye and put LADWP in a bit of defensive crouch. But those maneuvers have yet to result in any big changes in LADWP’s operations.
More successful has been the MLC’s effort to put people in front of the LA City Council and LADWP commission. The ability to rally citizens, scientists, academics, and environmental heavyweights was on full display at the September commission meeting. Almost 20 people urged the commission to not only expand the recycled water plant, but to loudly declare the “new” local water would allow LADWP to reduce Mono Basin exports.
It worked.
“We won’t need Mono Lake water to meet the supplies in LA” once the recycled water starts flowing, said Richard Katz, LADWP commission president.
That’s quite a statement and might hint at a changing political sentiment in LA regarding water exports from the Eastern Sierra.
Of course, LA never needed the yearly infusion of Mono Basin water.
The Mono water could have been “replaced” by purifying 25 million gallons a day, which was the original capacity for the Donald C. Tillman Water Reclamation Plant in Van Nuys. The plant will be expanded to purify 45 million gallons. That’s 40,000 acre feet, versus the 4,000 to 16,000 acre feet LADWP can divert from the creeks which feed the lake. That’s about 2% of the city’s annual water supply.
Math aside, the commission gets kudos for making the link. As a plus, it gets pats on the back from environmentalists and the environmentally sensitive LA mayor and other elected officials. Smiles all around.
The commission might also get some brownie points from the state agencies ruling on any changes to the current water rules around the lake.
Time will tell if that decision results in more water in Mono Lake. The recycled water won’t hit taps in LA for two years, and LADWP did not give up its water rights in the basin. Finally, it was noted that, during a drought, LADWP could resume diversions from Mono Basin. Thanks to groundwater bubbling up in the Mono Craters Tunnel which feeds into the Owens River, LADWP will still be collecting water from the basin even without the creek diversions.
If LADWP allows more water to flow into the lake, it will test its longstanding theory that snowpack, runoff, summer heat and evaporation have a far more significant impact on the level of the huge lake then its water diversions.
The worst-case scenario would be to have all available water flow into the lake without dramatically raising the water level because climate change continues to increase evaporation and reduce snowfall, snowpack and precipitation.
If that happens, Mono Lake will become yet another example of climate change overwhelming the best efforts of engineers and scientists to manage an ecosystem.
Jon Klusmire of Bishop will quote Mike Prather’s insightful observation about how to work for change: “Endless Pressure, Endlessly Applied.”
