Summer 2026 Mono Lake Newsletter

This issue of the Mono Lake Newsletter feels to me like the whole Mono Lake story distilled into one publication.

It’s a familiar story to anyone who knows Mono Lake. It starts with the lake ecosystem in peril, as the impacts to its health are accumulating after many decades of being kept too low (see page 3). The reason? The Los Angeles Department of Water & Power’s ongoing diversions (page 4).

Next comes the regulatory agency with the power to require that more water reaches Mono Lake—the State Water Board—which is finally moving to reconsider the rules that govern DWP’s water exports (page 5). The Board has a suite of hydrological and climate models to help inform how much water Mono Lake needs, all of which show positive signs for the lake’s recovery if water diversions are paused (page 7).

The chapter about Los Angeles’ increasing water resilience is both impressive and essential to the story—the city’s water supplies are plentiful and advancing quickly to capture, store, and recycle more water than ever (page 11).

Some of the best parts of the story are the people who speak up for Mono Lake, time and again. People who wrote letters and made comments at the State Water Board meeting this spring (page 6). People like Marc Del Piero, who achieved the first real protection for the lake 32 years ago and continues to speak with the wisdom of long experience (page 8). People like Marina Castellino, who has built a program that amplifies the voices of young people working to protect the world’s saline lakes (page 22).

As always, the story has a dash of hope. Look for it here and there—on the cover, in a headline, infused into our persistence for Mono Lake.

And if this issue of the Newsletter is like the Mono Lake story in miniature, that’s good news. Because we already know what happens in this story—we save Mono Lake. Let’s do it.

Selected articles from this issue