Despite hopes raised last spring for increased conservation, Los Angeles is taking most or all of its water allocation from Mono Lake through March due to a dry winter. This decision disappointed local environmentalists who had been advocating for a reduction in diversions from the iconic alpine lake.
Mono Lake on the eastern edge of the Sierra Nevada on May 20, 2023. Los Angeles has been diverting the iconic alpine lake's water to city taps since 1941.After the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power indicated last spring that it might, in a rare move, substantially reduce the amount taken from Mono Lake, a bone dry winter is causing the city to take most or all of its allotment of water from Mono Lake through March.
In July, the lake, rising from excessive snowmelt, hit its highest level in 17 years but is now dropping. A state, the department indicated it could take only 4,500 acre-feet from the lake’s tributaries through March of 2025. That’s less than a third of the maximum 16,000 acre-feet that the city is legally entitled to take in a water year — enough to serve up to 200,000 Angelenos, or 5% of the city’s population.
Voluntarily reducing water from Mono Lake runs counter to the water department’s operating directive. “We always try to maximize aqueduct deliveries to the city,” Perez said. That’s in part because water from the Eastern Sierra is one of the city’s cheapest supplies. “It wasn’t illegal,” said McQuilkin. “Reducing diversions in the first place was a voluntary action, but that was kind of the point — to show that we’re all working together … taking a collaborative approach forward, and that’s what’s so disappointing that DWP said, ‘Yeah, we’re not going to do that.’”
From an L.A. perspective and what we need on a day-to-day basis to thrive, that amount of water is very small, whereas for the recovery of Mono Lake, it’s incredibly important.Los Angeles’ 4 million residents consume about half a million acre-feet of water per year. Eastern Sierra water — mostly from the Owens River — makes up a variable portion of this total, from about 60,000 acre-feet in drought years to more than 300,000 acre-feet in wetter years.
Jeffrey Mount, a geomorphologist and water supply expert with the Public Policy Institute of California, thinks Los Angeles could relatively painlessly sever its link to the Mono basin.
MONOLAKESIERRA NEVADA WATER ALLOCATION CONSERVATION ENVIRONMENTAL BATTLES WATER SUPPLY
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