KEEP LONG VALLEY GREEN
The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) intends to dewater Long Valley. In 2018, LADWP notified agricultural ranch leaseholders in Long and Little Round Valleys in Southern Mono County that it intends to remove all irrigation water from future leases. The agency has not performed any study or analysis on this proposal’s impact on Long Valley’s environment, agricultural and recreational economies, the health and safety of local communities, or any other potential effects required by law.
In the 1940’s as part of its construction of the Los Angeles Aqueduct system, LADWP built the Long Valley Dam, flooding behind it to create Crowley Lake, thus destroying pre-existing wetlands meadows. Following the meadows’ destruction, LADWP allowed ranchers to irrigate areas around Crowley Lake. Since the early 1940s, ranchers have been allotted sufficient amounts of water to support their agricultural operations. This water also created and maintained wetland meadow habitats – habitats like those lost when LADWP created Crowley Lake. The water spread by ranchers mitigated – to some extent – the destruction of wetland meadows and environmental effects caused by LADWP’s creation of Crowley Lake.
Learn more about what’s happening at the official Keep Long Valley Green Coalition webpage.
The meadows provide significant environmental and community benefits. Today, the wetland meadows around Crowley Lake support a rich biodiversity of invertebrate, amphibian, and avian life, including the native Bi-state Sage Grouse, a species of special concern. The wet meadows also decrease the risk of wildfire,suppress dust for local communities, and sequester carbon to mitigate climate change impacts.
These meadows also support the local economy as the basis for both Southern Mono County’s ranching and recreation economies. Ranchers have stewarded these lands for generations, creating and maintaining habitat by spreading water for their operations. The meadows also support recreational tourism and activities such as world-class fishing at Hot Creek and the beautiful viewscapes enjoyed by significant numbers of campers, hikers, bikers, and OHV’ers from around the world.
Read more about the local economy and wildlife of the Long Valley at the official Keep Long Valley Green Coalition website.
Friends of the Inyo supports the continued irrigation of Long Valley agricultural leases and holds a leadership role in the Keep Long Valley Green Coalition, a diverse community group of ranchers, environmentalists, recreationalists, local residents, and tribal governments who oppose dewatering and believe that the drying of Long Valley’s meadows will adversely impact the natural environment and local economies.
Mono County and the Sierra Club filed litigation in August 2018 to stop the dewatering of Long Valley and Little Round Valley, challenging LADWP’s failure to perform an environmental review under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). In a major victory in March 2021, the Alameda Superior Court ruled that LADWP could not carry out such a drastic change from historical practice without first conducting a CEQA environmental review. Unfortunately, LADWP appealed this decision and it was ruled in late June 2022 that if LADWP was not dewatering the area, as it represented in court, it would not have to perform an environmental review.
Long Valley remains at the mercy of LADWP every spring, when the utility announces its irrigation plans. The Keep Long Valley Green Coalition continues to monitor LADWP’s actions in this area and to demand that LADWP provide a binding yearly water supply (adjusted for precipitation) for Long Valley and Little Round Valley.
You can help us keep Long Valley green: get involved in our grassroots movement to protect this Eastern Sierra ecosystem
Take Action
SUBSCRIBE: Sign up for Every Last Drop, Keep Long Valley Green’s monthly newsletter by clicking here.
DONATE: Donate to support the Coalition’s fight to defend Long Valley by visiting our Donate Today page.
GET INVOLVED: Sign up to be a volunteer for Keep Long Valley Green. Write to Allison@friendsoftheinyo.org.
Updates
Learn about flood irrigation and why safeguarding this ancient method of supplying water to the landscape is important to Long Valley and Little Round Valley, find out about the success of our local water justice docufilm, “Without Water,” and more! Happy reading, and if you like what you read…happy sharing!
Friends of the Inyo’s Executive Director speaks truth to power – as in the L.A. Department of Water & Power – in 9/17 OpEd in ‘The Sheet’ “It is very frustrating to see LADWP make efforts to inform the people of Inyo and Mono Counties about its conservation successes, and microscopic baby steps toward developing truly local water. What we’d really like to see up here, what the health of our ecosystems and our economy need, is a schedule of water extraction reduction,” writes Wendy Schneider, Friends of the Inyo’s Executive Director, who is considered a local water protector by…
Carbon sequestration, nature’s own way of capturing carbon and storing it in the environment, is looked at closely in the latest issue of Every Last Drop. Wetlands and meadows, such as those found in Long Valley, are great for sequestering carbon in the soil and keeping it from being released to the atmosphere. However, wetlands and meadows can only do this efficiently when they are healthy. LADWP’s water extraction is compromising the health of wetlands and meadows in Southern Mono County. Read all about it in Every Last Drop’s new visually appealing format!