Policy Notes

This July, the United States Forest Service (USFS) released a draft Desired Conditions Analysis for the DeChambeau Ranch complex on Mono’s north shore. The document identifies specific resource management goals for the historic ranch and artificial freshwater ponds. It also identifies a set of potential projects the USFS could undertake, such as installing pipes to distribute water, periodically draining and burning the ponds, or controlling noxious weeds.

Overall, the USFS has outlined a careful approach to managing the DeChambeau complex. The Committee is most concerned with efficient use of water. The USFS goal is that "a minimum amount of water is utilized as efficiently as possible with a minimum percolation loss." The Ranch and two of the artificial ponds in the area are dependent on water diverted from Mill Creek. Maintaining DeChambeau’s resources through efficient use of water is our key concern with DeChambeau—as it is with all other aspects of our work at Mono Lake.

Three of the projects that the USFS expects to complete in the near future are:

• installing a pipe connecting DeChambeau Ponds to County Ponds

• installing a pipe around the ranch compound to bring water efficiently past the ranch during the days when the ranch is not being irrigated, and

• sealing the easternmost County Pond with bentonite.

The DeChambeau Ranch was acquired by the USFS in 1992. The property includes historic buildings, which the USFS has maintained in a state of "arrested decay," and several recently restored artificial ponds that are maintained by an artesian well. Downslope from the ranch, the USFS also manages County Ponds, natural depressions that in former times received and held irrigation runoff.

On Wednesday, August 18, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, the Great Basin Unified Air Pollution Control District, California Air Resources Board, local tribal governments, and local municipal governments stood out on the Owens dry lakebed to witness the signing of the Owens Lake Dust Control Plan by the Environmental Protection Agency. It has taken almost 20 years to come up with this dust control plan which will give DWP until the year 2006 to control the worst particulate pollution problem in the nation.

Dust emission points on the lakebed will be covered by a combination of water, gravel, and vegetation. An initial ten square miles will be flooded as vegetation takes too long to grow. By 2002 an additional 3.5 square miles will be covered, and three more square miles in 2003. Vegetation will be used on some sections of the lake as it uses less water than flooding. A new plan will be developed in 2003, but DWP has already agreed to keep treating two square miles a year until federal health standards are met.

Where DWP plans to come up with the water remains unresolved. Flooding will use about 25,000 acre-feet of water every year, which is enough to serve 50,000 households, and the entire project may take 40,000 acre-feet every year to keep the dust down.

In a letter to the editor of the Los Angeles Times, Michael Prather of the Eastern Sierra Audubon Society in Lone Pine wrote:

"...not only was a dust health hazard created but a valuable wildlife resource was nearly destroyed. Even today Owens Lake is more than merely a ‘barren lake bed.’

A string of small wetlands lines its margins where thousands of shorebirds feast on brine flies during their migration between the arctic and Central and South America.

The House Subcommittee on Energy and Power heard testimony in July on H.R. 623. This is the bill, introduced by Congressman Knollenberg (R, MI), to repeal all national efficiency standards for plumbing products—the law that requires all new construction to install low-flow toilets and showerheads. The hearing and the media coverage were stacked to favor the bill, but Congressman Milirakis, a Republican from Florida, and Congressman Dingell (D, MI), the ranking Democrat for the Commerce Committee, made it clear they would strongly oppose any further consideration of the bill. If the bill is to move through Congress, it must next be heard at the full Commerce Committee level. While we hope this will not happen, it can occur anytime in 1999 or 2000.