Today, after the tour of the sewage plant and the Piute Ponds (the bus only parked at the northwest corner of the Piute Ponds so it was disappointing from a birding point of view--although the Roadrunner and two Dunlins were nice) I had a long conversation with the management level employees who came in from LA, along with Alfonso, who works there at the Lancaster plant. What they said was that currently birders can visit but for right now while they have some kind of construction project going on (I don't have specifics) they strongly prefer that we visit on the weekends, and they want us to call their LA office phone number ahead of time:

(562) 699-7411 extension 6502

They also said that they would prefer to keep the process for obtaining access informal (maybe they are avoiding taking this topic too high up the food chain?).

We did explain to them that normally they would not have such large numbers of birders coming in groups, and that post-Bean Goose it would go back to random individuals showing up once in a while, before or after they look to see what's at the Piute Ponds.

My guess is that after several months when they realize that only a small number of people would drop by individually once in awhile, that this isn't a big deal or a problem for them.