Sunrise light on a grove of tufa towers emerging from the water of Mono Lake with soft green and dusty-red wild grasses in the foreground, Canada geese in the shallow water with reflections of the rocky towers, and desert hills in the distance.

Over 800 cfs of water in lower Rush Creek, on its way to Mono Lake

Sunrise light on a grove of tufa towers emerging from the water of Mono Lake with soft green and dusty-red wild grasses in the foreground, Canada geese in the shallow water with reflections of the rocky towers, and desert hills in the distance.
Photo by Bartshe Miller.

Wednesday afternoon (June 7) at the Rush Creek culvert on Test Station Road: On this hot afternoon the creek was running at about 820 cubic feet per second when Education Director Bartshe Miller took the UC Santa Cruz Natural History Field Quarter class on a tour of the Mono Basin’s complex plumbing. It’s great to see the water so brown and turbid—that means sediments are getting moved downstream toward the Rush Creek delta, where they will get deposited, improving the delta habitat for birds and animals.

Check back during this runoff season for more stream restoration updates here on the Mono-logue—you can also find them all by clicking on the “2017 runoff” tag, below.