Owens Lake

Owens Lake
Location	Sierra Nevada Inyo County, California
Coordinates	36.433269°N 117.950916°W / 36.433269; -117.950916
Type	Flat
Primary inflows	Owens River Natural springs and wells
Basin countries	United States
Max. length	17.5 mi (28.2 km)
Max. width	10 mi (16 km)
Max. depth	3 ft (0.91 m)
Surface elevation	3,556 ft (1,084 m)
References

Owens Lake is a dry lake in the eastern Sierra Nevada of Inyo County, California, located about 5 miles (8.0 km) south of Lone Pine, California. Unlike most dry lakes in the Basin and Range Province that have been dry for thousands of years, Owens held significant water until 1924, fed by the Owens River.

History

Starting in 1913, the streams that fed Owens were diverted by Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) to feed the Los Angeles Aqueduct and the lake level started to drop quickly (see California Water Wars). As the lake dried, soda processing at Keeler switched from relatively cheap chemical methods to more expensive physical ones. The Natural Soda Products Company sued the city of Los Angeles and built a new plant with a $15,000 settlement. A fire destroyed this plant shortly after it was built but the company rebuilt it on the dry lakebed in the 1920s.

During the unusually wet winter of 1937, LADWP diverted water from the aqueduct into the lakebed, flooding the soda plant. Because of this the courts ordered the city to pay $154,000. After an unsuccessful appeal attempt to the state supreme court in 1941, LADWP built the Long Valley Dam which impounded Lake Crowley for flood control.

Current conditions

Owens Lake from the Horseshoe Meadows Road

The lake is currently a large salt flat or playa whose surface is made of a mixture of clay, sand, and a variety of minerals including halite, mirabilite, thenardite and trona. In wet years these minerals form a chemical soup in the form of a small brine pond within the playa. When conditions are right, bright pink halophilic (salt-loving) bacteria spread across the salty lakebed. Also, on especially hot summer days when ground temperatures exceed 150° F (66°C), water is driven out of the hydrates on the lakebed creating a muddy brine. More commonly, periodic winds stir up noxious alkali dust storms which carry away as much as four million tons (3.6 million metric tons) of dust from the lakebed each year, causing respiratory problems in nearby residents, because of the health issues caused by LAPWD drying the lake bed, they were ordered to prevent the alkali dust from causing more issues so they installed a sprinkler system on the lake.

Current management

Alkali Dust Storm at Owens Lake

As part of an air quality mitigation settlement, LADWP is currently shallow flooding 27 square miles (69.9 km²) of the salt pan to help minimize alkali dust storms. There is also about 3.5 square miles (9.1 km²) of managed vegetation being used as a dust control measure. The vegetation consists of saltgrass, which is a native perennial grass highly tolerant of the salt and boron levels in the lake sediments.

Ecology

This once blue, saline lake was a very important feeding and resting stop for millions of waterfowl each year. During a visit to Owens Lake in 1917, Joseph Grinnell from the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology in Berkeley reported, “Great numbers of water birds are in sight along the lake shore--avocets, phalaropes, ducks. Large flocks of shorebirds in flight over the water in the distance, wheeling about show in mass, now silvery now dark, against the gray-blue of the water. There must be literally thousands of birds within sight of this one spot.”

Owens Lake is still considered to be a Nationally Significant Bird Area by the Audubon Society even though Owens is now a mostly dry lake. At the playa's shore, a chain of wetlands, fed by springs and artesian wells, keep part of the former Owens Lake ecosystem alive. Snowy Plovers nest at Owens along with several thousand Snow Geese and ducks. As a result of current dust mitigation efforts, shallow flooding of the lakebed has created both shallow and deeper (about 3 feet (0.9 m) deep) habitats on the lakebed. This water, although seasonally applied, is helping to buoy the lake's ecosystem causing hope in conservationists that an expanded shallow flooding program could do even more. There are no serious plans, however, to restore Owens to anything resembling a conventional lake.

On April 19, 2008, the Eastern Sierra Audubon Society, Audubon-California, and the Owens Valley Committee held the first lake-wide survey of the bird populations of Owens Lake. Volunteers recorded a total of 112 avian species and 45,650 individual birds—the highest total number of birds ever officially recorded at Owens Lake. Volunteers identified 15 species of waterfowl (ducks and geese) and 22 species of shorebirds. The highest totals for individuals of a species included 13,873 California Gulls (an inland nester at Mono Lake and elsewhere); 9,218 American Avocets; 1,767 Eared Grebes; 13,826 ‘Peeps’ or small Sandpipers such as Dunlin, Western and Least Sandpipers; and 2,882 individual ducks.

Local industry

Before the lake dried up, a chemical plant at Bartlet evaporated brine to extract chemicals. A charcoal kiln burned wood from Cottonwood Canyon near the lake to feed silver and lead smelters across the lake at Swansea. Cartago was a port out of which a barge-like vessel, the Bessie Brady (launched in 1872), cut the three-day freight journey around the lake to three hours. Much of the freight it carried was silver-lead bullion mined from the Cerro Gordo Mines which at its height was so productive that bars of the refined metals had to wait in large stacks before teamsters could haul it to Los Angeles in a trying three-week journey (one way). This situation improved after the formation of the Cerro Gordo Freighting Company. Keeler, now nearly deserted, is a town near the lake that once had a population of 5,000 people and was the center of trade for the Cerro Gordo mine in the 1870s. Its current population is only about 50 people and continues to fall as residents die or relocate. In 1879 silver mining ended but the town was saved when the Carson and Colorado Railroad built narrow-gauge rail tracks to the town. The town then became a soda, salt and marble shipping center until 1960 (the rail line was sold to Southern Pacific Railroad in 1900).

Public access

At the 200-acre Cartago Springs wetland at the foot of Owens Lake, the California Department of Fish and Game is using mitigation funds from Cal Trans to enhance habitat. This property continues to develop as a wildlife-viewing area for the public. The site is open year-round for viewing of numerous bird species attracted to the ponds and wetlands as well as the ruins of a historic soda ash plant from the World War I era and the 1920s.

References

• "Dammed by Past, Owens River Flows Again". Los Angeles Times.
• Geology Underfoot in Death Valley and Owens Valley. Missoula: Mountain Press Publishing Company. 1997. ISBN 0-87842-362-1. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)

External links

• The Owens Valley Committee: Owens Lake
• Owens (Dry) Lake, California: A Human-Induced Dust Problem
• Owens Lake Dust Bedevils Keeler
• David Maisel's "The Lake Project"
• "The Eternal Dustbowl" 03/22/2006 feature article in the LA Weekly on the controversy surrounding the Los Angeles Dept. of Water and Power's environmental mitigation efforts at Owens Lake, written by Jeffrey Anderson, with photographs by Claudio Cambon.