Drain - The Ripple Effect: The Fate of Freshwater in the Twenty-First Century - page 132

alkaline; with a pH of 10, about the same as household glass cleaner, its waters have a
viscous look and a slippery feel, like soapy water, and the bitter-tasting brine will des-
troy clothing.
Due to a salinity of between 5 and 8 percent—double the oceans' salinity—the lake's
waters are inhospitable to fish and most other creatures, but Mono holds an enormous
population of brine shrimp and alkali flies. More than seventy species of migratory and
nesting birds feed on the shrimp and fly blooms. (Experts say that if the lake's salinity
increases to 13.3 percent, the shrimp population will collapse.)
To L.A.'s water planners, the supersaline waters of the lake were not of immediate
value, but its many clear tributary streams were a valuable prize.
According to the California historian William Kahrl, Mulholland's agents had
scouted Mono Basin as a new water supply and even acquired a few water rights there
as early as 1913. But Los Angeles was competing with local power companies, farmers,
miners, and even the city of San Diego for Mono's water. In 1920, Mulholland and his
friend Arthur Powell Davis, head of the federal Reclamation Service, concocted a deal
whereby Reclamation engineers would prepare detailed plans for an extension of the
Los Angeles Aqueduct to the Mono Basin—work that Los Angeles would pay for and
retain control of—in the name of irrigating the Owens Valley and the possible construc-
tion of hydroelectric dams. Under this pretext, Mulholland gained political cover from
his competitors and access to land for an extension of his aqueduct.
To the LADWP, characterizing Mono as “lifeless” or “a dead sea” helped deflect in-
terest from the lake's water and made the case for diverting its tributary streams for its
own purposes. Los Angeles engineers initiated a project to “reclaim” the basin's “wasted”
waters and declared that “to salvage the water in Mono Basin being lost in the saline wa-
ters of Mono Lake” was a noble cause. In 1930, Los Angeles voters approved a $38 mil-
lion bond issue to extend the city's aqueduct into Mono Basin. As in the Owens Valley,
Los Angeles's agents bought out property owners, brought lawsuits, condemned prop-
erty, and used whatever means they could to grab the water rights in the Mono Basin.
With those rights secured, in 1934 they began to build the Mono extension of the Los
Angeles Aqueduct.
In 1941, after six years of backbreaking work by eighteen hundred men , a tunnel
connecting the Mono and Owens Valleys was completed. It extended the length of
LADWP's aqueduct to 350 miles. As water from the tributary streams feeding Mono
Lake was diverted south to Los Angeles, the effect was dramatic: within a few years, the
volume of Mono Lake was cut in half and the salinity of its water doubled. Algae, the
base of the lake's food chain, could no longer photosynthesize efficiently. Islands that
were once important nesting sites became peninsulas accessible to predators; bird popu-
lations were wiped out or driven away. As the lake bed was exposed, winds swept partic-