Is Cain do-able?
Mono Lake Committee’s proposed education center meets resistance
Unintended consequences can be found everywhere it seems, even in what many would consider a remote, innocuous place such as the Cain Ranch in Lee Vining. That’s where a collision could be taking shape between a well-intentioned educational effort by the Mono Lake Committee, and Native American history and culture.
At Tuesday’s Mono County Board of Supervisors meeting, Committee Executive Director Geoff McQuilkin and Educational Director Bartshe Miller went before the Mono County Board of Supervisors requesting their signatures on a letter of support for a planning grant to study the MLC’s proposed Mono Basin Outdoor Education Center on the Cain Ranch site. The letter is intended to supplement a planning grant application recently submitted to the Sierra Nevada Conservancy.
The 7.5-acre parcel, which the Mono Lake Committee plans to lease from Los Angeles Department of Water and Power for the new education center, is adjacent to the current 2 bedroom house on land located off U.S. 395 at Hwy 158. That home is the current location of the Cain House project, which is part of an educational outreach program the Committee has staged at the Cain Ranch site for the past 15 years that involves students from inner city Los Angeles, as well as the Eastern Sierra. In a Sept. 1 letter to the Board, Miller said the site is in need of improvements in order to better serve students and accommodate larger group sizes. Of the 7.5 acres, only 3 would actually be used in development of the Center.
“The Cain Ranch is a place we dearly love that offers an amazing amount of value,” Miller said. “We’ve been doing a lot of visioning and the Cain House can’t go anywhere, it can’t get any bigger, it can’t accommodate any larger groups.” The letter to support the planning grant would, he added, be a step closer to helping the Mono Lake Committee “find out what can be done on the site.”
Designated “open space” near a scenic highway corridor, Miller emphasized the abundance of wildlife, cultural and wildlife resources on the Ranch property.
“This is about kids … from L.A., from the Eastern Sierra,” he told Board members. “It’s about getting outside, learning how we’re connected by water, seeing the peaks and the high country. Some of these kids have never seen the Milky Way.” (Incoming District 1 Supervisor Larry Johnston echoed that observation, pointing out he’s had experience with some inner city kids who grew up in street-lit neighborhoods that didn’t even know there are stars in the sky, much less what they are.) “It’s a great program,” Board Chair Byng Hunt opined. “Many of these kids never get to experience these things in their whole lifetime.” Community Development Director Scott Burns added, “What [the Committee] proposes is a safe approach, taking a look at the property, doing an Environmental Impact Report … careful planning.”
Not everyone, however, sees it as being so “careful” Some of Mono’s Native American tribal leaders have voiced discontent about the project, saying the land in question is culturally sensitive to the Native American population and has archaeological value. They want to discuss other options before moving forward any further.
Hunt, in his response to those concerns, said that the way he views it, the environmental analysis will allow all those options to be brought to light.
“One major concern we have is the disturbance and desecration of the site,” Raymond Andrews, President of Mono Lake Kutzadika’a Paiute Indian Community commented. Andrews went on to assert that in Mammoth there was a site there that was desecrated and built on, and another prehistoric site is on the chopping block in June Lake. He added that in 1959, the skeletal remains of a child dated between 200 and 700 AD was removed from the Cain Ranch site. “Are there funds for cultural monitors and mitigation?”
“Is this a definition of history here?” asked Lucy Parker, whose multi-tribe background has its roots in both Mono County and Yosemite “On the grant application’s list of community members, I didn’t see any tribes mentioned. Tribes have been indigenous to the Basin for thousands of years. There is history you may not know if you didn’t do the research. Researchers have found artifacts and remains [on the Cain Ranch property].”
Disagreement from another angle
In other public comment, Bonnie Noles, whose family settled in the Mono Basin in the 1870s and later homesteaded 160 acres overlooking Mono Lake, also cited possible impacts to sage grouse and willow flycatcher populations. Longtime local Lee Vining residents have signed a petition opposing the project. The problem: development at Cain Ranch – period. Noles said the Committee has a hotel-esque building on property it owns, though Miller said that is currently used for housing scientists conducting research. “Confine the educational center there,” she urged. “Developing the site is not acceptable.”
Noles has had previous disagreements with the Mono Lake Committee. In a 1997 story in High Country News (“Mono Lake: Victory over Los Angeles turns into local controversy,” Dec. 8, 1997), she called the Committee’s plan to restore a natural creek at the expense of a century of local history “not only outrageous, it’s unrealistic.”
Noles told HCN writer Jane Braxton Little at the time that, “The Mono Lake Committee wants to revert the basin to pre-European stage. We’re here now. They’ll have to load us up, too. Our ancestors came in, cleared out the sagebrush and created farmlands. We don’t want to change history. “These are not just scientific issues. These are historical, cultural and aesthetic values. They raise the question of how human beings fit into the scheme of things in the Mono Basin.”
Noles went on to assert that there was no support during RPAC meetings for the project, only opposition. (Interim District 4 Supervisor Bob Peters later challenged that observation by pointing out that at the RPAC meeting three months ago the Committee’s presentation was informational in nature anyway, and not agendized for support or approval.) She asked the Board to not sign the letter, at least
until appropriate studies and public meetings could be conducted on the matter.
“I wouldn’t dare speak for any community, but maybe there’s some existing data on a vast burial area,” Tim Hansen observed. “Maybe it hasn’t been disturbed until now because it’s LADWP land.” He also advocated holding off on the letter for now, but suggested that in the future, perhaps the site’s archaeological studies could be incorporated as part of the educational plan for the kids.
“The Committee is well known as raising the same questions about other developments,” McQuilkin said in his comments. “Our goal is to hold ourselves to the same or higher standards to which we would hold other developers. Planning and investigation will answer questions presented that we would like to know the answers to ourselves.”
Peters agreed. “Mono Lake Committee is entitled to an opportunity to answer those questions and I think [the County’s letter] helps provide that opportunity,” he said.
Tom Farnetti advised the general public that support of the letter should by no means be interpreted to mean that the Board supports the project. “We’re lucky to be living in an age of process,” Hunt said.
Supervisor Vikki Bauer came down against supporting the letter, indicating she thought the center may not be the right use for the right space. She also voiced concerns that change in space might lead to a change in the program’s parameters and how the students live and interact together. “I’m sorry to take that position, but sometimes you have to see things from both sides,” she stated.
Incoming District 1 Supervisor Larry Johnston said he thinks this stage of the process should be fairly straightforward: conduct an environmental analysis, issue a negative declaration [of impact] and move forward. The acreage, he pointed out, is already disturbed, or “developed,” with a house already in existence on the Cain Ranch land. The Board voted to sign the letter 3-1-1, with Hazard absent.
