Where credit is due
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