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Are you free today at 6pm?

Come join us at the Inyo County Water Commission meeting.

We need your voice!

Patsiata (also known as Owens Lake). Photo by Santeena Pugliese.

Last week, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) released its Draft Annual Operations Plan for the next year. This document explains LADWP's plans for groundwater pumping over the next twelve months. 

Inyo County is our advocate in this process. The Inyo County Water Department will submit comments on the Draft Operations Plan to LADWP this Wednesday, April 30. Inyo County officials need to hear from their constituents in order to push for a meaningful reduction in groundwater pumping.

The ONLY meeting that is fully dedicated to discussing Inyo County's comments and hearing from the public is TODAY. This is the Inyo County Water Commission meeting. It will be held on Monday, April 28, at 6pm.

Let's tell Inyo County what we'd like to see: a meaningful reduction in groundwater pumping!

Give a verbal comment. Attend the meeting and provide a public comment urging Inyo County officials to take a strong stance in their comments on LADWP's Draft Operations Plan. By attending and commenting, we’ll show Inyo County that its constituents care about reducing water extraction from our valley. This will be a hybrid (in-person + online) meeting.

• Attending In-Person: Inyo County Water Department, Conference Room, 135 S. Jackson St., Independence, CA
• Attending Online:

Submit a written comment. If you can’t make it in person, submit a written comment. Every comment counts!

• Email your comment to lpiper@inyocounty.us.
• In the subject line of the email, mention that your comment addresses Agenda Item 7, "Discussion of LADWP’s 2025-26 Draft Annual Operations Plan."
• Your comment may be read aloud at the meeting. Regardless, it will become part of the public record.

We encourage the public to get as specific as possible during their comments. We know that it can be intimidating to contribute a public comment when you might feel like you don't know enough. However, specific public comments will help create more concrete change!

The big question for us to think about: 

What would we like Inyo County to tell LADWP about its groundwater pumping?

If you would like some guidance for planning your comment, here are our suggestions:

1. Consider what big themes or topics inspire you about water. Why do you care about how much water LADWP pumps? Are you especially motivated by a particular place in the valley? Are you compelled by the topic of failed mitigation projects, vegetation getting drier, monitoring the impacts of pumping, or allowing groundwater levels to rise?
2. Match your personal "big theme" to a specific ask that you would like Inyo County to communicate to LADWP. 
3. Below, we've included several ideas to help you form your comments.

Specific wells we are prioritizing:

• Do not pump Well 416.
  • This production well in the Lone Pine Wellfield was drilled in 2002. It has only been pumped for testing purposes, and results showed the potential for this well to adversely affect private wells and groundwater levels throughout the Lone Pine area. The Annual Operations Plan states that LADWP will create an operational plan for this well this year. They may begin pumping as well, in addition to the planned pumping from Lone Pine Wellfield.
  • These actions would be unacceptable. Please urge LADWP to remove operational planning for Well 416 and any plans to pump it.
•  Do not conduct the pump test on Well 386.
  • Well 386, as well as its neighbor Well 385, is supposed to be permanently shut down. LADWP’s pumping from these wells devastated over 300 acres of Owens River riparian habitat and meadow between Bishop and Fish Slough, west of Five Bridges Road. These impacts were described in the 1991 EIR on the Long-Term Water Agreement and LADWP committed to restore the vegetation.
  • The California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) requires LADWP to mitigate the damage they caused in this area. However, it has been more than 30 years since the impact and LADWP has failed to complete this mitigation project. Rare plants have disappeared, very little riparian vegetation has re-established, shrubs such as rabbitbrush are creeping in and taking over alkali meadow, and the entire area is covered in noxious perennial pepperweed. Beyond incomplete mitigation, parcels transitioning to drier vegetation violates the Long-Term Water Agreement.
  • LADWP needs to halt all plans for pump tests or future pumping for Well 386. This plan violates the 1999 Revegetation Plan, which called for the wells to be permanently shut down. If LADWP cannot mitigate for damage caused by pumping, LADWP should not be allowed to pump.
•  Do Not Install Well B2 or Well B5 in Bishop.
  • LADWP is considering installing two new wells in the Bishop Wellfield to provide "operational flexibility." Inyo County has stated concerns that these new wells could impact non-LADWP wells nearby. (page 1-12)
  • There is no need for new wells. We ask that LADWP halt planning for these new wells.

Other ideas that we're focusing on:

• Reduce pumping as much as possible. 
  • LADWP plans to pump between 67,860 - 88,560 acre-feet of water during this upcoming runoff year (Table 1-6). Put another way, this is 22,112,277,943 - 28,857,402,514 gallons of water.
  • We ask that LADWP pumps below this minimum estimate. They can find places to trim even their minimum estimates, and we urge them to do so. 

  • Allow groundwater levels to rise and then stay within the root zones of the valley’s groundwater-dependent vegetation.

• Remove the sentence referring to potential changes to pumping plans later in the year.

  • The Draft Operations Plan says the Technical Group will monitor “runoff and environmental conditions to assess if further changes to the planned pumping are needed for the second half of the 2025-26 RY.” (page 1-1) In other words, they might change their pumping plans in the fall.

  • Snowpack and predicted runoff conditions do not allow LADWP to revise the pumping plan later in the year. (If conditions qualified as a dry year, LADWP would be allowed to create another pumping plan in the fall.) The documents do not permit DWP to increase pumping or reduce in-valley uses this coming fall.

• Use surface water instead of pumped water for supplying Type E lands.

  • Type E refers to irrigated pastures and other lands in the valley that receive water allotments from LADWP. LADWP is obligated to continue to supply water for these uses in perpetuity.

  • We ask that LADWP supply Type E lands with surface water, not pumped water. In addition, do not pump to make up for the surface water supplied to these lands. This will help groundwater levels continue to rise and recover.

• Revisit the status of all wells "exempt" from monitoring.

  • Over 30 wells are currently "exempt" from monitoring (listed in Tables 1.3 and 1.5), for a variety of reasons. For 9 of these wells, the reason given for exemption is “no impact on groundwater dependent vegetation.” That conclusion is a fallacy -- all pumping has effects. These statuses have not been reevaluated in years, so these wells have potentially enormous unstudied impacts.

  • All of these statuses must all be revisited.

  • In addition, we ask that LADWP work together with the Big Pine Paiute Tribe, California Department of Fish and Wildlife, and interested stakeholders on mitigating for the impacts in Big Pine due to excessive groundwater pumping at the Fish Springs Fish Hatchery.

• Identify which parcels have transitioned to drier vegetation types and summarize these findings for the public.
  • Many wellfields are transitioning to drier vegetation types, which is prohibited under the Long-Term Water Agreement. We are losing alkali meadows to shrubs, and shrubs to upland desert scrub. We are also losing trees.

  • We ask for wellfield vegetation assessment and a report on its status which the non-expert public can understand. We would like to see this data compared to the mid-1980s baseline and relative to vegetation in the valley that has not been subject to pumping-induced water table drawdowns.

Check out the Eastern Sierra Water Alliance (ESWA) website to learn more about water justice work in the valley!

If you have any questions, please email lauren@friendsoftheinyo.org.

Main Office:

621 W. Line St., Suite 201
Bishop, CA 93514

Satellite Office:

142 E. Bush St.

Lone Pine, CA 93545

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