Parker, and Rush Creeks) for municipal use and hydropower generation. Mono Lake's tributaries contain glacial fed snowmelt from the Sierra Nevada and thus convey potable water, whereas the water in Mono Lake itself was and is not potable due to its salinity. Despite being granted permits, DWP lacked the appropriate conveyance facilities to physically appropriate and transport the volume of water that was granted at the time. 1963: The City of Los Angeles authorized the construction of a new aqueduct, the Second Los Angeles Aqueduct to transport surface water from Mono Basin and both surface and groundwater from Owens Basin. 1974: SWRCB issued licenses confirming DWP's right to divert water from Mono Lake tributaries, resulting in annual diversions of approximately of water from Mono Basin since the aqueduct was completed in 1970. The diversions from the second aqueduct caused the surface area of the lake to decrease by one-third and the lake level to drop , exposing of lakebed. 1977: Stanford biologist David Gaines published a study on Mono Lake's ecosystem highlighting the dangers of water diversion that garnered national attention to the potentially catastrophic ecological impacts to Mono Lake from the DWP diversions. 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. 1979: The California Department of Water Resources (CDWR) and the United States Department of the Interior (USDI) undertook a joint study of Mono Basin. The study concluded that the level of Mono Lake should be stabilized at . To achieve this goal, drastic reductions of water exports from Mono Basin were recommended from the present annual average of to a limit of . Legislation was introduced to implement this recommendation, but was never enacted. 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