In May the Inyo County Board of Supervisors agreed (with some reservations regarding private land owners in the proposed historic district) to support an effort by local tribes, to create a historic district on the Owens Lake to be included in the National Register of Historic Places. The nomination is supported by the State Lands Commission and the Great Basin Unified Air Pollution Control District. It is being prepared to submit to the California State Historic Preservation Officer. If accepted, it can be considered at the federal level as well.

Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) is required by court order to protect cultural resources when it implements projects to control fugitive dust on the dry lake bed. However, these projects have been done in phases and have also looked at the cultural resources in phases. In a piecemeal approach, cultural resources may not rise to the level of significance to be protected as they would if taken in context of the entire lake bed and its lake shores going back 14,000 years. The Inyo County General Plan has designated the Owens Lake bed as a solar energy development area that if developed by LADWP, would severely impact the cultural resources in the area as well.

The Owens Lake is an archeologically rich area and the site of a massacre of Native Americans. Just 15 miles south of the Owens Lake, the BLM's archeological evaluation of the area proposed for a second North Haiwee Dam identified 92 cultural resources that documented 6,000 years of human land use: 34 archeological sites, 3 building remnants, 55 isolated finds. Six of the archeological sites are eligible for listing in the National Register of Historic Places. No doubt the Owens Lake and surrounding area is culturally significant and needs protection.