The spicy, bitter smell of sagebrush hung in the air, thick as the flies, as we (me, Jimmy, my brother Chris and my son Ryan) tromped through the shrubs and brush covering land that just forty years ago was four feet under water before the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power began diverting Mono Lake’s tributary streams to meet growing water demands in Los Angeles.
I made a mental note to buy bug repellant first chance I got as I swatted at the tiny alkali flies that are part of the fragile ecosystem supported by Mono Lake, located in California's spectaular Eastern Sierra Great Basin. The cloud of curious critters had noted our half mile trek from the parking lot to the shores of this desert oasis with a buzz of in-your-face excitement.
Even from a distance I could make out the macabre tufa towers that had drawn us, like flies (obviously, when in Rome/Mono Lake, do as the flies do), to this amazing spectacle of nature man had nearly destroyed.
Even from a distance I could make out the macabre tufa towers that had drawn us, like flies (obviously, when in Rome/Mono Lake, do as the flies do), to this amazing spectacle of nature man had nearly destroyed.
Deprived of the freshwater sources, Mono Lake levels dropped 25 vertical feet in the first 20 years. By 1982, forty-one years after Los Angeles initiated diversion efforts, the lake levels had dropped an astounding 40 vertical feet, exposing 18,500 acres of lake bed.
The unusually productive Lake Mono ecosystem suffered. Islands once safe for nesting became peninsulas vulnerable to mammalian and reptilian predation. Photosynthetic rates of algae growth, the base of the food chain, were reduced, which in turn reduced reproductive abilities of the tiny brine shrimp (not for human consumption) teeming in the lake waters (the endorheic lake is two times as salty as the ocean).
The hundreds of species of birds nesting in the area plummeted,
as did the millions of migratory birds using Mono Lake for resting and feeding before continuing on to South America 3,000 miles away.
Air quality declined, too, as the exposed lake bed became the source of dust storms causing violations to the Clean Air Act. The repercussions were chaos theory at its finest, the Butterfly Effect rippling throughout this endorheic basin and the surrounding watershed.
Had it not been for David Gaines, twentieth-century man would have destroyed in a single lifetime what had taken Mother Nature five million years to create. In 1974, then a Stanford University teaching assistant, Gaines sparked an interest in Mono Lake among his students. Gaines earned a grant from the National Science Foundation to conduct the first comprehensive ecological study of Mono Lake, and in June 1977 the UC Davis Institute of Ecology published the report, “An Ecological Study of Mono Lake, California.”
That report drew attention to the potentially catastrophic ecological impacts of Mono Lake’s falling water levels due to the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power diversion program and ultimately resulted in the establishment of the Mono Lake Committee, “a nonprofit citizen’s group dedicated to the preservation of the scenic and wildlife values of Mono Lake, California.”
On September 28, 1994, legislation resulting from the efforts of the Mono Lake Committee and others brought an international designation to Mono Lake as a site in the Western Hemisphere Shorebird Reserve Network (WHSRN); that legislation also mandated restoration policy to restore lake levels to 6,392 feet, 25 feet below its 1941 levels, at least according to this panel posted just yards from the parking lot. With luck, and the aforementioned legislation, in another twenty years that panel will sit at the edge of Lake Mono.
Air quality declined, too, as the exposed lake bed became the source of dust storms causing violations to the Clean Air Act. The repercussions were chaos theory at its finest, the Butterfly Effect rippling throughout this endorheic basin and the surrounding watershed.
Had it not been for David Gaines, twentieth-century man would have destroyed in a single lifetime what had taken Mother Nature five million years to create. In 1974, then a Stanford University teaching assistant, Gaines sparked an interest in Mono Lake among his students. Gaines earned a grant from the National Science Foundation to conduct the first comprehensive ecological study of Mono Lake, and in June 1977 the UC Davis Institute of Ecology published the report, “An Ecological Study of Mono Lake, California.”
That report drew attention to the potentially catastrophic ecological impacts of Mono Lake’s falling water levels due to the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power diversion program and ultimately resulted in the establishment of the Mono Lake Committee, “a nonprofit citizen’s group dedicated to the preservation of the scenic and wildlife values of Mono Lake, California.”
On September 28, 1994, legislation resulting from the efforts of the Mono Lake Committee and others brought an international designation to Mono Lake as a site in the Western Hemisphere Shorebird Reserve Network (WHSRN); that legislation also mandated restoration policy to restore lake levels to 6,392 feet, 25 feet below its 1941 levels, at least according to this panel posted just yards from the parking lot. With luck, and the aforementioned legislation, in another twenty years that panel will sit at the edge of Lake Mono.
We reached the water’s edge as the sun was descending on Mount Dana just beyond the western edge of Mono Lake.
But the real show was happening around the tufa towers (that’s toofa, as in rhymes with loofa) protruding from Mono Lake.
Their stark beauty glowed in the setting sun, highlighting the fragile balance between the evolution of mankind and the sustainability of the planet.
Decades, if not centuries, had contributed to that stark beauty, the result of underwater springs beneath the lake bed that are rich in calcium (the stuff in your bones) mixing with the briny lake water, rich in carbonates (the stuff in baking soda), to create a chemical reaction that results in calcium carbonate – limestone.
That buildup occurred exclusively beneath the surface of the water, water that had subsequently receded, revealing the macabre and eerily beautiful formations.
Like stoic foot soldiers to the geological past, the tufa towers stand as a reminder that we are obligated to protect and preserve the past, particularly our water resources, or jeopardize the future of our planet, and ultimately the future of mankind.
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