David Allen Gaines (December 30, 1947 – January 11, 1988) was an American environmentalist and the founder of the

Mono Lake Committee The Mono Lake Committee (MLC) is an environmental organization based in Lee Vining, California in the United States. Its mission is to preserve Mono Lake, by reducing diversions of water from the Eastern Sierra watersheds by the Los Angeles Depart ...

. The Mono Lake Committee (along with the

Audubon Society The National Audubon Society (Audubon; ) is an American non-profit environmental organization dedicated to conservation of birds and their habitats. Located in the United States and incorporated in 1905, Audubon is one of the oldest of such orga ...

) initiated a lawsuit against the

Los Angeles Department of Water and Power The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) is the largest municipal utility in the United States with 8,100 megawatts of electric generating capacity (2021-2022) and delivering an average of 435 million gallons of water per day to more ...

to reduce or stop the water diversions that were lowering

Mono Lake Mono Lake ( ) is a saline soda lake in Mono County, California, formed at least 760,000 years ago as a terminal lake in an endorheic basin. The lack of an outlet causes high levels of salts to accumulate in the lake which make its water a ...

; Gaines' approach in the lawsuit was to work with the opposition instead of demonizing them. He and his wife, Sally Gaines, began the committee in 1978. They required help from students at Stanford University,

UC Davis The University of California, Davis (UC Davis, UCD, or Davis) is a public land-grant research university near Davis, California. Named a Public Ivy, it is the northernmost of the ten campuses of the University of California system. The institut ...

UC Santa Cruz The University of California, Santa Cruz (UC Santa Cruz or UCSC) is a public land-grant research university in Santa Cruz, California. It is one of the ten campuses in the University of California system. Located on Monterey Bay, on the edge ...

, and

Earlham College Earlham College is a private liberal arts college in Richmond, Indiana. The college was established in 1847 by the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) and has a strong focus on Quaker values such as integrity, a commitment to peace and social ...

. Based on research in the Mono Basin, Gaines co-wrote a chapter in the book ''California Riparian Systems''; this helped bring scientific attention to the issues at Mono Lake. As a collaborative team, The Mono Lake Committee took a stand against LADWP. On January 11, 1988, Gaines died in a car accident at the age of 40 caused by a wind and snowstorm. Sally and his two children, Vireo and Sage, survived the accident.

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