All eyes turn to regulator action to fix low lake problem
As the end of the year approaches, so does the formal launch of the long-anticipated California State Water Resources Control Board Mono Lake hearing process. Expected to take nine or more months, the hearing is the necessary quasi-judicial procedure the Board must undertake to modify the rules governing how much water the Los Angeles Department of Water & Power (DWP) can divert from tributary streams, export from the Mono Basin, and permanently take away from Mono Lake.
In March, the Board discussed Mono Lake extensively, receiving a report from the UCLA Center for Climate Science affirming that water diversions have had a significant impact delaying Mono Lake’s recovery to the Board-mandated management level of 6,392 feet above sea level. The Mono Lake Committee and a wide range of interested parties called for action to pause diversions since the lake is only halfway to 6,392 feet and a decade overdue. The discussion concluded with Board members unanimously directing staff to do the legwork needed to initiate the hearing process before the end of the year.
Summer showed preparations were underway. Board staff held two science workshops covering the status of Mono Lake’s limnology, brine shrimp, alkali flies, California Gulls, phalaropes, Eared Grebes, and waterfowl.
DWP attorneys and staff sent multiple letters to the Board complaining about the process to date, calling for the cancellation of the science workshops, claiming that diversions have little relevance to lake level, criticizing the Committee, and questioning scientific data. In contrast to the widespread public, Tribal, and agency concerns about the low lake level, DWP’s letters asserted that “actions taken by LADWP since issuance of [the State Water Board’s 1994 decision] have been overwhelmingly successful.”
Despite DWP, the State Water Board has expressed a focused purpose for the hearing. In the summer, Board documents described the plan for the hearing to “determine whether Mono Basin water diversions should be modified to reach Mono Lake’s legally mandated water management level.”
This makes sense as the management level was established after years of proceedings and is founded on solid science. The maximum amount of water DWP could divert was set to adequately restore the lake level in the hydrological models of the time, with the clear recognition that if the numbers didn’t work out, a future hearing could fix them. Of course that’s exactly the situation we’re in today, with the lake only halfway to the mandated level and a decade late in getting there. The hearing the Board required as a safeguard in 1994 is the one that soon will be underway.
The official start of the process will come when the Board issues a hearing notice. The notice will describe the steps of the process, ask interested parties to declare their intent to participate, and set key dates, including an initial conference of the parties.
A hearing process is intensive, and the Committee has been preparing diligently to present a principled legal, scientific, and water supply case for Board action to put the lake back on the rise to health by pausing diversions until the 6,392-foot management level is achieved. With a record-setting El Niño poised to deliver ample water to California this winter the Committee looks forward to the hearing getting underway so that, finally, delivery of the water Mono Lake needs will be required.
This post was also published as an article in the Fall 2026 Mono Lake Newsletter. Top photo by Elin Ljung.