Mono Basin National Forest Scenic Area

The city of Los Angeles needs to reduce its diversion of water from the Mono Lake basin by up to 75% in order to preserve the lake's delicate and unusual ecosystem, the U.S. Forest Service said Tuesday as it unveiled a draft management plan in Los Angeles. Although the Forest Service cannot legally compel the city to cut back its water consumption, the Mono Basin National Forest Scenic Area management plan was applauded by a spokeswoman for the Mono Lake Committee.

After behind-the-scenes negotiations with environmentalists, the city of Los Angeles has agreed to support legislation that would eventually require it to curtail water diversions from the eastern Sierra streams that feed picturesque Mono Lake. The city's decision removes a major obstacle to the passage of bills designed to restore and protect the desert lake 300 miles north of Los Angeles.

After behind-the-scenes negotiations with environmentalists, the city of Los Angeles has agreed to support legislation that would eventually require it to curtail water diversions from the eastern Sierra streams that feed picturesque Mono Lake. The city's decision removes a major obstacle to the passage of bills designed to restore and protect the desert lake 300 miles north of Los Angeles.

The city of Los Angeles needs to reduce its diversion of water from the Mono Lake basin by up to 75% in order to preserve the lake's delicate and unusual ecosystem, the U.S. Forest Service said Tuesday as it unveiled a draft management plan in Los Angeles. Although the Forest Service cannot legally compel the city to cut back its water consumption, the Mono Basin National Forest Scenic Area management plan was applauded by a spokeswoman for the Mono Lake Committee.

David Gaines was the sort of activist to have on your side. Mild-mannered and 40, he was no rabble rouser or bomb thrower. Gaines used the eloquence of his words and his photos to alert the nation to the environmental threats to Mono Lake, that improbable body of saline water flanked on one side by the towering Sierra Nevada and on another by a moonscape of volcanic craters. Gaines founded the Mono Lake Committee 10 years ago, working out of makeshift offices inLee Vining.

It's one of the grand landscapes of the American West--an ancient lake cradled by volcanoes, glacier-carved canyons and snowy peaks. Visitors marvel at the eight-mile-long (north to south) and 13-mile-wide lake and its unusual tufa towers, remarkable limestone creations that rise from the lake in magnificent knobs and spires. Not everyone finds the Mono Basin magnificent. Too desolate and too weird, some folks think.

The giant Canadian developer Intrawest and Mammoth Mountain Ski Area have taken an avalanche of criticism for explosive growth in the eastern Sierra town of Mammoth Lakes as they carve out a "destination resort." That label means the partners can charge more for lift tickets and much, much more for condos and hotel rooms built within the pervasive faux-Alpine theme. Housing values have soared to the point that many Mammoth-area workers can't afford to live there anymore.

Californians fought for years to keep the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power from draining strange and spectacular Mono Lake. They shouldn't have to go to war again to save a small but critical slice of Mono's shore from another public agency, Caltrans. This is another story of how a good idea got wished into a really bad one. Since 1992, people living in the Eastern Sierra have sought to get the California Department of Transportation to straighten one unsafe curve on U.S.

The results of the latest scientific study of Mono Lake are valuable, but constitute no dramatic surprise: If the City of Los Angeles imports its full water-right entitlement from the Mono Basin, there will be a dramatic effect on the thriving ecosystem of the lake. A 30-foot drop in the lake level could kill off brine fly and brine shrimp populations and thus drive away many of the birds that use the lake for a seasonal stopover, as well as the California gulls that nest there.

The Mammoth Mountain Ski Area has purchased a Mono Lake parcel threatened with private development, easing concerns that a stunning stretch of the Eastern Sierra could be marred by housing construction. But Mammoth's $3-million purchase, which closed last week, is not entirely altruistic. The resort wants to trade the 120 acres for national forestland it leases for ski and lodging facilities at the base of the mountain, raising a new set of conservation concerns.

The license plate on the little pickup truck spells out the issue concisely: "H204MNO." Translation: Water for Mono. Mono Lake, that is. The eerie, salty lake on the arid eastern side of the Sierra Nevada. The place that Mark Twain labeled "The Dead Sea of the West" and naturalist John Muir called a "country of wonderful contrasts: Hot deserts bounded by snow-laden mountains . . . frost and fire working together in the making of beauty."

Watching the tourists from Europe scarf down cheeseburgers, I wondered if every aging Volkswagen bus there wears a "Save Mono Lake" bumper sticker, as they seem to here. Many of the lunchers were, like my threesome up from Los Angeles, in town to enjoy the seeming renaissance of Mono Lake, the Eastern Sierra saltwater sea noted for its eerie rock towers and troubled past.