Thursday, Feb. 11, 1999 | 4:13 a.m.
Four consecutive wet years have given fish and the lake a reprieve, but specialists acknowledge that more Walker River water must reach the lake in the long term to sustain life in this ancient body of water.
"Without the interference of man upstream, Walker Lake would not be endangered today," says Mike Sevon, regional supervisor of fisheries for the Nevada Division of Wildlife.
Upstream reservoirs at Topaz and Bridgeport plus agriculture in Lyon and Mineral counties account for two-thirds of Walker River water never making it to Walker Lake.
As a result, the 20th century has seen the lake's water level drop 125 feet with the lake's volume today less than one-fourth of what it was in 1908, said Jim Thomas, a hydrologist with the U.S. Geological Survey.
The lake has reclaimed 13 feet since reaching its historic low in May 1995 but the average Walker River flow for the next 50 years must increase 50 percent to maintain the current level, measured by the surface elevation, of 3,954 feet.
Buying water rights for the lake is a primary goal of the Walker Lake Working Group. A group of about a dozen private citizens has worked since 1993 to raise awareness about the lake.
"(Six years ago), a lot of up-river users were publicly saying, 'Let it die,"' says Lou Thompson, the working group's founder and chairman. "They're not saying that any more. Some are even saying we need to find a way to save the lake."
Surface elevations tell the story about Walker Lake and its predecessor, the much larger Lake Lahontan. Lahontan at its highest in Mineral County reached altitude 4,380 feet, just encompassing all of what today is Hawthorne, five miles south of the current shoreline.
At its peak about 15,500 years ago, Lake Lahontan spread north from Hawthorne through the Carson Sink, north to Pyramid Lake and then northeast through the Black Rock Desert.
Walker Lake is only a tiny remnant of Lahontan but still the second largest lake entirely in Nevada. Walker's altitude stayed between 4,000 and 4,100 feet throughout the 19th century and until summer 1950. The level has never reached 4,000 feet again.
Biologically, 3,970 feet is considered a crucial elevation. The last time Walker had that much water was July 1987. After that year, no Walker River water reached the lake until 1995 except for a small 4,500-acre-foot release from Weber Dam.
Bob Tompkins illustrates the lake's plight by describing the size of trout he has caught during the last 30 years.
He has noticed average trout gaining one to two pounds a year during the present four-year wet cycle.
Tompkins caught trout generally weighing up to 3 pounds last year with the average weight up to 4 pounds so far this year. He remembers the average fish weighing up to 8 pounds when he started fishing Walker Lake in the late 1960s.
"When I first came here, you had 20-pound cutthroat trout out there," said Tompkins, owner of Gun and Tackle Sporting Goods in Hawthorne. "When I took over the store in 1989, 15 pounds won the derby."
Walker Lake supporters are encouraged by this year's largest trout so far weighing in at 9 pounds, 8 ounces.
Lahontan cutthroat trout are native to Walker Lake but the species has not been able to breed on its own since the Walker River Paiute Tribe built Weber Dam in 1933-37 17 miles upstream near Schurz, and blocked the upstream spawning path for the trout.
The Paiutes in April plan to start rebuilding about a third of the dam. Pleas from the Walker Lake Working Group to incorporate a fish ladder couldn't be satisfied, tribal leaders said.
"With the funding package we have, we asked for a fish ladder but that was considered an enhancement," said John Hicks, the tribe's vice chairman. "Our primary focus is on safety. It's not that we didn't want it. We would love to have a ladder installed. It may become a reality at a later date."
Walker Lake supporters have threatened legal action to stop the Paiutes, claiming that the tribe's environmental reviews misrepresented the dam project. Thompson regards the project as building a new dam while Hicks said only a third of the dam will be modified.
Weber Dam is only one topic of contention which plagues the Walker River and Lake system from the headwaters in California to its terminus at Walker Lake.
Federal decrees in 1919 and 1936 established water rights for the Walker River. Several sources said the river has been allocated to about 130 percent.
The Walker River Paiute Tribe in 1993 and Mineral County in 1994 filed motions to intervene in the decree in an effort to obtain additional river water. The tribe and county have yet to serve notice on all the holders of water rights on the Walker River.
The lake generates about 40 percent of revenue in Mineral County, Commissioner Arlo Funk said.
"We want security that the lake maintains a certain level," Funk said. "We want to stabilize the level of the lake. We don't want to be greedy."
archive
