Mono County: What it needs to do to help recover Lahontan Cutthroat Trout

When I read about California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) lawsuits, and when I read poorly-written Environmental Impact Reports (EIRs), it makes me wish I could start a nonprofit environmental consulting firm that could set the example for doing good CEQA practice while keeping costs affordable. It really isn't that hard to follow the law and do good CEQA if you don't have an agenda other than the intent of CEQA, which includes:

• It is necessary to provide a high-quality environment that at all times is healthful and pleasing to the senses and intellect of man.
• Develop and maintain a high-quality environment now and in the future, and take all action necessary to protect, rehabilitate, and enhance the environmental quality of the state.
• Ensure that the long-term protection of the environment, consistent with the provision of a decent home and suitable living environment for every Californian, shall be the guiding criterion in public decisions.

Those are only three of the fourteen statements of legislative intent, but you get the idea. How is this not the best law ever? When you read an EIR and watch how agencies behave, you wonder if any of them or their EIR-writing consultants have ever read these guiding principles of California's best and most important law.

One such frustrating EIR is the EIR for the Mono County General Plan Update. Now, most of this EIR is quite good. It actually impresses me as one of the better-written EIRs I've ever read. The biological resources section is a joy to read. But where it falls apart is the Cumulative Effects section.

And that is where most EIRs fail. In California, we generally don't do a good job of analyzing cumulative effects, so this EIR isn't out of the ordinary in this regard. But two wrongs don't make a right--we can and must do better. But more about that in part 2 about where Marin County fails, gets sued, and fails again.

In an EIR chock full of significant individual impacts due to policies that would encourage a build-out population of 48,702--this is a massive increase in population of a remote, rural county full of hazards and sensitive resources--the Mono County General Plan Update Draft EIR takes 4 pages of the 6-page cumulative effects section to discuss the "Water Transfer Program," a federal program to acquire water rights to protect and restore Walker Lake, Nevada and its decimated native fisheries.

Walker Lake, NV in the foreground, and its Mono County, CA headwaters
in the background, Fall 2007.