Lots of folks are letting us know that they did not understand all the details in our alert. Sorry!! We were acting in extreme urgency, given what was happening and what was at stake. Here is some further explanation.
Relicted land in general is land exposed by changes in water levels or locations, including lake fluctuations and stream meandering. Relicted land at Mono Lake is specifically considered to be the land exposed due to the diversions of Mono Basin streams to L.A., which began in 1941. In 1941 the lake was at 6417 feet above sea level, therefore Mono’s relicted land today is the shoreline exposed below 6417 elevation -- generally the still visible ring of land next to the lake that has different vegetation (primarily salt grass and rabbit brush) than you see on the land above the 1941 lake-level line, which has established sagebrush, bitterbrush, and many other plants. In summary, Mono's relicted land consists of all land below 6417 down to the edge of the lake – currently at about 6385 feet above sea level.
In California, the state owns relicted land exposed by unnatural accretion or reliction (with some exceptions, including that the U.S. owns relicted land below USFS land at Mono Lake). The state also owns all land under navigable rivers and lakes and land up to the high tide mark on the coast. Therefore, at Mono Lake the state owns the land between 6417 and the surface of the lake (except below USFS land), as well as the lakebed itself.
Lands exposed by natural accretion or reliction belong to the adjacent property owner in most cases. Accretion is the slow addition to land by deposition of water-borne sediment.
The Mono Lake Tufa State Reserve was established in 1981 as a unit of the State Park System to manage the state-owned, relicted land and to protect the public trust resources at Mono Lake.
The private landowners adjacent to relicted land have been frustrated in their attempts to use state land. Private use of state land is allowed, but the landowners have found the state exceedingly slow to respond to their requests. The resolution passed by the Mono County board was a crude attempt to resolve the matter through legislation by simply changing the ownership boundaries – essentially changing the definition of what constitutes state-owned, relicted land at Mono Lake. (Note that this action has nothing to do with changing the level of Mono Lake itself.) What the board didn't fully realize was that this move would threaten the existence of the Tufa State Reserve as well as put cracks in the public trust at Mono Lake.
What's the Committee's position? We enthusiastically support the Mono Lake State Reserve as an essential protector of the public trust and as a valuable partner in managing visitation at Mono Lake. We support the landowners' desire to use state land when that use is not detrimental to the Reserve and when it is also "historic use." (A key feature of the protections put in place at Mono (the Mono Lake Tufa State Reserve and the Mono Basin National Forest Scenic Area was recognition that historic uses should be able to continue.) We support solving the landowners' use issue through administrative means – that is, pressuring the state to move more quickly to develop use leases – rather than through legislative means.
Back to Relicted Lands Issue Page
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