National Audubon Society v. Superior Court
Under Roman law, the air, the rivers, the sea and the seashore were incapable of private ownership; they were dedicated to the use of the public.
[8] The central issue in the case was whether appropriative water rights (granted in the past) must consider the public trust doctrine, requiring protection of natural resources by the state.
[1][8] In 1979, the National Audubon Society, Mono Lake Committee, and others (Audubon) filed a suit against City of Los Angeles Department of Water and Power DWP to suppress their diversion of the four tributaries that originally supplied Mono Lake with water from Sierra snowmelt.
Spanish and Mexican law also recognizes the public trust doctrine; the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo guarantees these rights in California.
The suit attempted to establish Public Trust rights in Mono Basin, and sought declaratory and injunctive relief.
[8] This case eventually reached the Supreme Court of California, where a landmark ruling was handed down in favor of Audubon, which held that the public trust doctrine applied to the Los Angeles Mono Basin diversions and that the state must exercise continuous supervision to ensure that trust values are continuously considered.
[14] 1940: the City of Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (DWP) was granted permits allowing appropriation for the entire flows of four out of five of Mono Lake's tributaries (Lee Vining, Walker, Parker, and Rush Creeks) for municipal use and hydropower generation.
[16] This led to the formation of the Mono Lake Committee and a grassroots movement spanning over 30 years to stop the diversions and restore the basin California Water Wars.
[8] 1979: The National Audubon Society (Audubon), Mono Lake Committee, Friends of the Earth, the Los Angeles Audubon Society, and Mono Basin landowners initiated the original lawsuit with the Superior Court of Mono County in 1979 against Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (DWP), asserting that the diversions were a violation of the public trust doctrine, were both a public and private nuisance, and a violation of California State Constitution Article X, Section 4 & Article XVI, Section 6, which respectively prohibit obstruction of navigable waters and gifts by the state of a state asset.
The suit attempted to establish Public Trust rights in Mono Basin, and sought declaratory and injunctive relief.
[17] The case was transferred to Alpine Superior Court; DWP filed a cross-complaint seeking adjudication of Basin water rights to all appropriators, naming 117 cross-defendants, including the plaintiffs, the State, United States Forest Service, U.S Bureau of Land Management, and other private water users.
Finally, DWP asserted that any nuisance at Mono Lake was attributable to the newly exposed lakebed and sought a declaration that conditions resulted from a valid exercise of the police power by the State of California.
Simultaneously, Audubon sought permission to include a cause of action based on the federal common law of nuisance, asserting that Mono Lake is an "interstate or navigable" water in which there is an overriding federal interest, and DWP's diversions were causing water and air pollution.
[17] At the beginning of the 20th century, the city of Los Angeles, which lies south of Mono Lake, began to undergo huge growth.
Around 1905, former Los Angeles Mayor, Fred Eaton, and his colleague William Mulholland, began to buy land in the Sierra Nevada region to secure water supply.
Plaintiffs claimed that the waters of Mono Lake were protected from the DWP diversions by the public trust doctrine.
The Supreme Court held that the state has an obligation to protect Mono Lake once the diversions begin to harm public trust interests.
Audubon claimed that air pollution in the form of alkali dust storms were caused by Mono Lake's dropping water level.
On October 6, 1988, the United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit, held that Audubon could not claim a federal common law nuisance based on air pollution.
[20] The Public Trust Doctrine has also been expanded to protect lands in their natural state to serve as ecological units for scientific study.
Quoting Marks v. Whitney, the court said, "There is a growing public recognition that one of the most important public uses of the tidelands and use encompassed within the tidelands trust is the preservation of those lands in their natural state, so that they may serve as ecological units for scientific study, as open space, and as environments which provide food and habitat for birds and marine life, and which favorably affect the scenery and climate of the area."
In 1884, the court considered impairment of navigability in the American and Sacramento rivers due to mining on their non-navigable tributaries.
"[22] The second issue in this case was whether plaintiffs must exhaust their remedies before the Water Board prior to bringing action in court.
[2][23] The applicability of the public trust doctrine to the case was described by the court as follows:[24] "The principal values plaintiffs seek to protect .
[24] The population and economy of California depend on the appropriation of vast quantities of water for uses unrelated to trust values.
The court stated that, under Article X, section 2 of the California Constitution "all uses of water, including public trust uses, must conform to the standard of reasonable use.
[24] The court ordered a study to be prepared to determine the impact of DWP's diversion upon the public trust of Mono Lake.
[8] However, Richardson entered a dissent from part five of the opinion (exhaustion of administrative remedies) where the majority held that the courts and the California Water Resources Board have concurrent jurisdiction in cases of this kind.
Richardson's dissent of part five concluded, "The majority's suggestion that various statutory provisions contemplate the exercise of concurrent jurisdiction in cases of this kind is unconvincing.
[8] The decision of the court expanded the reach of the public trust doctrine to non-navigable tributaries of navigable waters.
