State Water Board launches new era of stream restoration at Mono Lake

Great news for Mono Lake’s tributary streams!

Yesterday evening in Sacramento the California State Water Resources Control Board issued Order WR 2021-0086 EXEC amending the Mono Basin water rights of the City of Los Angeles to incorporate extensive new requirements that maximize the restoration of the 20 miles of streams, forests, and fisheries that lie downstream of the Los Angeles Aqueduct diversion dams.

The action draws on decades of detailed scientific study to prescribe specific measures that will significantly advance the recovery of the streams, trout populations, and the streamside forests and wildlife, all of which suffered extensive damage due to past excessive water diversions by the Los Angeles Department of Water & Power (DWP).

The Board’s measures are also essential to building the resilience the stream habitats desperately need as climate change impacts, such as rising water temperatures and extended drought, increase.

We all know Mono Lake is a special place. The fact so many entities collaborated on solutions and relied on the recommendations of independent scientific experts, who were enlisted by the State Water Board and spent years studying the situation, makes these developments all that more rewarding. This is noteworthy progress for restoration of an area that helped establish the Board’s obligation to consider the public trust doctrine when weighing the environmental impacts of water rights.”

E. Joaquin Esquivel

Chair, California State Water Resources Control Board

In the face of rising temperatures and drier climates, we have to rethink the way we preserve our natural world, and work together to ensure we can count on access to water for generations to come. This collaboration between the City of Los Angeles, Mono Lake Committee, and the State will help make some of our most crucial waterways more resilient as we grapple with our new reality of longer and more intense droughts.”

Eric Garcetti

Mayor of Los Angeles

A big thank you to the water board for their perseverance in recognizing the importance of Mono Lake and its tributary streams. Today’s stream restoration order has been a long time coming and will lead to great results for the habitat and wildlife that depend on them.”

Sally Gaines

Board Chair & co-founder, Mono Lake Committee

The State Water Board directed the stream scientists to specify how streamflow releases would (paraphrasing the Order) restore functional and self-sustaining stream ecosystems and trout populations with healthy riparian ecosystem components to Rush Creek and Lee Vining Creek.

Though lacking the near poetic ring of Aldo Leopold‘s definition for health as an ecosystem’s ‘capacity for self-renewal,’ the Board’s intent mirrored his. What will the capacity for self-renewal actually require? Not theoretically or conceptually, but practically. After a twelve-year monitoring program funded by the Los Angeles Department of Water & Power, our “Synthesis of Instream Flow Recommendations Report” was finalized in 2010. The new State Water Board Order is a vote of confidence in the Synthesis Report as the pathway to restoring Rush and Lee Vining stream ecosystem health.”

Dr. Bill Trush

River ecologist, State Water Board Stream Monitoring Director

The restoration of Mono Lake and its tributary streams is bigger than any one person or one’s life span. We’ve all contributed in our own ways as scientists, policy makers, planners, educators or lovers of the Mono Basin’s natural beauty. The work we’ve done towards reaching this culminating point of the amended license is a huge accomplishment; yet there is much more work to come. Hopefully, we have set the wheels in motion to recover and sustain the unique ecosystem of Mono Lake for many future generations.”

Ross Taylor

Fisheries biologist, State Water Board Stream Monitoring Director

Thanks to the State Water Board’s leadership, a new era of science-based stream restoration is now underway that will benefit fish, wildlife, and all Californians. We are proud to join together with Mayor Garcetti, the City of Los Angeles, and conservation partners to support and implement this bold phase of the programmatic effort to restore Mono Lake and its tributary streams.”

Geoffrey McQuilkin

Executive Director, Mono Lake Committee

All things are connected. The plants, streams, meadows, fish, trees, and the wildlife will be restored to the rushing waters talking to all in a refreshing way, drink up my relations. It is a good day. WATER is life.”

Charlotte Lange

Chair, Mono Lake Kutzadika’a Tribe

Four generations of my family have been consistently visiting the Mono Basin. Over the last almost 30 years, we have specifically built a relationship with Rush Creek. We supported in the planting and watering of some of the first trees to return to Rush Creek. As we stand amongst the trees that are now three to four times our height, I tell my daughters stories of how the healing of the creek is about healing a relationship between water, the land and all of the plant and animal relatives. I tell them stories of how the healing of this creek is related to the healing of our peoples, after generations of colonization, migration, and re-orientation.”

mark! Lopez

Eastside Community Organizer & Special Projects Coordinator, East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice

California Department of Fish & Wildlife fully endorses the State Water Board’s decision today which will ultimately result in a long-term benefit for public trust resources related to the restoration of Rush, Lee Vining, Walker and Parker creeks. This decision is the result of science and partnership coming together with a common goal that will benefit generations to come.”

Alisa Ellsworth

Environmental Program Manager, California Department of Fish & Wildlife

I commend the State Water Board on this historic stream restoration action that will have lasting positive outcomes for Mono County. The flowing waters of our streams are essential to the local environment, economy, and wildlife. The commitment of Los Angeles to implement new beneficial projects under the Order to restore Rush and Lee Vining creeks to health is a model for a more sustainable future partnership within the county.”

Bob Gardner

Mono County Supervisor, District 3

The Mono Basin settlement is a prime example of the continuum of voices and action needed for long-term sustainability of fisheries and successful protection of our natural resources.”

Sandra Jacobson

Director, South Coast and Sierra Regions, California Trout

LADWP will modernize its water storage infrastructure. It will implement measures to protect the creek ecosystem against the impacts of climate change. The parties will collaborate in further monitoring to assure the restoration program is working. This collaboration is essential here and elsewhere in California to resolve our crises in water supply and ecosystem protection.”

Richard Roos-Collins

Attorney, California Trout

This bold action by the State Water Board helps to close an infamous chapter in the City of Los Angeles’ environmental history. This mayor, Eric Garcetti, personally and assertively has provided leadership to ensure Mono Lake and many miles of tributary streams will live on for generations.”

Tom Soto

Board member (Los Angeles), Mono Lake Committee

Building on the four decades of sampling and measuring of Mono Lake’s ecology, I look forward to continuing this work and appreciate the support of the State Water Board and the work of the LADWP staff over the last decade.”

Dr. John Melack

Distinguished Professor, University of California, Santa Barbara
newly appointed State Water Board Mono Lake Limnology Director

Richard Dahlgren, a dedicated fly fisherman, and Elden Vestal, my father and the first fisheries biologist to work in the Inyo-Mono region, both contributed in critically important ways to the litigation that created the foundation for today’s announcement. Dick and Elden are no longer with us, but if they were, I think that they would say, ‘Finally, after more than 25 years, DWP is compelled to comply with requirements necessary to restore instream flows in the creeks such that they will sustain fish in healthy condition and restore the habitat that is so essential. No more delays to do what is right for Rush and Lee Vining creeks. The public trust will be honored.’”

Robert Vestal

son of Elden Vestal, Department of Fish & Game fisheries biologist from 1939–1950 in the Mono Basin

A landmark order for streams

The new requirements were designed by independent fisheries and stream scientists tasked with identifying the best methods to accomplish the State Water Board’s goal of restoring “functional and self-sustaining stream systems with healthy riparian ecosystem components” and “trout in good condition.” The order requires delivery of sophisticated instream water flows to Rush and Lee Vining creeks that mimic natural patterns of Sierra snowmelt to reactivate the processes that will shape and sustain the streams. The order also ends the diversion of Walker and Parker creeks altogether.

Aerial view looking over Rush Creek toward Grant Reservoir. — A significant action item will be spillway modification at the Grant Lake Reservoir Dam. Its antiquated aqueduct infrastructure was constructed in the 1930s and lacks the capacity to release necessary water flows into Rush Creek.

The Board’s landmark action is built on a voluntary settlement agreement between the Mono Lake Committee, DWP, California Department of Fish & Wildlife, and California Trout. The agreement set forth mutually agreeable ways to advance stream restoration and was submitted to the State Water Board in 2013.

“In the face of rising temperatures and drier climates, we have to rethink the way we preserve our natural world, and work together to ensure we can count on access to water for generations to come,” said Mayor Eric Garcetti. “This collaboration between the City of Los Angeles, Mono Lake Committee, and the State will help make some of our most crucial waterways more resilient as we grapple with our new reality of longer and more intense droughts.”

“Thanks to the State Water Board’s leadership, a new era of science-based stream restoration is now underway that will benefit fish, wildlife, and all Californians,” said Geoffrey McQuilkin, Mono Lake Committee Executive Director. “We are proud to join together with Mayor Garcetti, the City of Los Angeles, and conservation partners to support and implement this bold phase of the programmatic effort to restore Mono Lake and its tributary streams.”

A person walking on a gravel bar along a stream lined with trees, mountains are in the distance. — The order requires delivery of sophisticated instream water flows to Rush and Lee Vining creeks that mimic natural patterns of Sierra snowmelt to reactivate the processes that will shape and sustain the streams.

A view of the recovering riparian forest on lower Rush Creek looking back toward the Sierra Nevada. — The updated requirements were designed by independent fisheries and stream scientists tasked with identifying the best methods to accomplish the State Water Board’s goal of restoring “functional and self-sustaining stream systems with healthy riparian ecosystem components” and “trout in good condition.”

Grant Dam modernization required

A significant action item will be the modernization of antiquated aqueduct infrastructure at the Grant Lake Reservoir Dam, which was constructed in the 1930s and lacks the capacity to release necessary wet year water flows into Rush Creek. DWP crews will modify the reservoir spillway to create additional release capacity, creating workforce and economic development benefits as well. The project is designed and environmental review is complete, meaning work can get underway in 2022.

Former DWP Director of Water Operations Marty Adams sketches the conceptual Grant Reservoir outlet plan on the Grant Reservoir spillway with people looking on. — In September 2013, then DWP Director of Water Operations Marty Adams sketched the conceptual Grant Outlet plans in the Grant Lake Reservoir spillway.

Los Angeles Department of Water and Power water diversion structure on Lee Vining Creek. — The Los Angeles Aqueduct diversion structure on Lee Vining Creek was updated with a Langemann gate. The Grant Lake Reservoir spillway will be modified with similar gates under the new order.

Restoration monitoring continues

Order WR 2021-0086 EXEC also establishes an ongoing process for science-based adaptive management of annual flow patterns. A monitoring program run by the Stream Monitoring Directors Ross Taylor and Dr. Bill Trush will evaluate the success of the stream restoration measures. For improved efficiency, administration of monitoring activities will be jointly run by a new team made up of the settlement parties. A separate matter of dispute over Mono Lake monitoring is also resolved with the appointment of Dr. John Melack as Limnology Director.

A new era of stream restoration

Years of hard work have gone into reaching this landmark moment. Mono Lake Committee supporters know well that persistence and collaborative effort are essential ingredients for healing Mono Lake and its tributary streams. Indeed, work remains to ensure Mono Lake reaches its mandated sustainable management level. This State Water Board action shows that these lengthy efforts can lead to positive results. As the yellows and oranges of fall tinge the aspens and cottonwoods, the creeks now flow to Mono Lake alive with the promise of a healthier, sustainable future.

Click here to view the full text of Order WR 2021-0086 EXEC, which was issued on October 1, 2021 by the California State Water Resources Control Board.

Mono Lake Committee staff monitoring stream recovery standing in shallow water in the stream. — A monitoring program will evaluate the success of the stream restoration measures.