Dear HCN,
Your essay “How to get
rural people to stand proud and tall” perpetuates the myth that the
Mono Lake Committee “saved” Mono Lake (HCN,
9/4/95).
The record clearly shows that the
increased flows into Mono Lake of the past several years – thanks
to decreased diversions out of the Mono Basin by the Los Angeles
Department of Water and Power – are the product of two lawsuits
against the California State Water Resource Control Board filed by
a fisheries conservation organization, California Trout, Inc.,
based in San Francisco.
California Trout, not the
Mono Lake Committee, put that water back into Mono Lake because it
based its case on a couple of statutes of the Fish and Game Code.
They require that sufficient water be passed over, around or
through a dam to maintain fish populations below the dam in good
condition. Prior to California Trout’s lawsuits, these statutes had
been overlooked by other environmental
groups.
Let’s give credit where it is due, not
only for the sake of fairness, but even more compelling, because
that is the way things
happened.
Anonymous
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Where credit is due.
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