Blue No More Part 1: The Salton Sea

In February 1905, a new sea was born in California. The Colorado River had burst out of its man-made gates and flooded into the Imperial Valley, slicing into the soil at a foot per second. A waterfall formed on formerly flat land, one that rapidly receded backwards towards the river. It grew as high as 80 feet before the flow over the fall was contained. Homes and farms were swept away, and by that summer, almost the entire flow of the Colorado River had been diverted into the new Salton Sea. This, however, is only the middle of the story.

The Salton Sea. [Image source]

The Imperial Valley today is home to some of California's best farmland. Over 48 percent of all employment in the valley comes from agriculture. There's little rainfall in the valley, so nearly all the water for agriculture comes from irrigation, to the point where the Colorado River dries up to almost nothing below it- and, in fact, it's rare for the river to flow above ground at all in Mexico now. It's somewhat weird that such fertile soil exists in such a dry place, however. Why is it there? The Salton Sea. Or, that is to say, past Salton Seas.

This isn't the first time the Salton Sea has existed. Over millions of years, as the Colorado River has moved into and out of the valley, the Salton Sea is born, dries up, and then is reborn again and again. The cycle happens around every 400-500 years on average, and the last time it was naturally filled was around 1600-1700 AD, as confirmed by the histories of Native Americans living there later on. Past Salton Seas have often even dwarfed the newest one. Each time, more and more salt was deposited- before the current Salton Sea was born, the Salton Sink was the site of major salt mining operations. The whole cycle dates back to to the Pleistocene Ice Age, when the whole region was part of the Sea of Cortez (also known as the Gulf of California). The Colorado River Delta, however, grew in size until it actually cut off the region from the rest of the Sea of Cortez.

Imperial Valley cropland, with the Salton Sea behind it. [Image source]

In 1900, California started constructing irrigation canals to water the Salton Sink, the dried up former home of the historical Salton Seas. (It's unknown why they thought it was a good idea to redirect water into a basin that lies below sea level.) The canals rapidly started to silt up. By 1904, the original channel and two bypasses had silted up entirely. The developers persuaded Mexico to let them cut another bypass beneath the border. Since this canal bypass was only meant to be in use for a short time while they cleaned out the original channel, they build it with relatively flimsy floodgates- after all, they'd never have to stand up to the spring floods. So, of course, the spring floods arrive two months early and flood the valley. Three years of the heaviest rainfall on record immediately following the flood sealed the deal.

There was some confusion about what to do with the new sea for quite some time. California engaged in legislative duels for years with its neighbor states over the water rights to the Colorado- apart from LA and the various agricultural valleys of Southern California needing the water, the Salton Sea remained vulnerable to periodic floods from the Colorado River, until the various Western states divided up its flow between themselves and built the series of massive dams along its length that exists today.

The dried-up riverbed of the Colorado downstream of the former Imperial Canal, which was built to supply the Imperial Valley with water. Photo circa 1905. [Image source]

Increasing amounts of Imperial Valley agriculture fed the lake with plenty of runoff. The fertilizers in the water fed a massive population of artificially introduced tilapia that peaked at a hundred million members in the nineties. The fish population, in turn, supported a massive migratory and seabird population, including some endangered species. By the 1960s, the Salton Sea had become a major tourist destination, attracting more visitors every year than Yosemite. The relatively young beachfront towns of the Salton Sea became economic bonanzas. The warm, shallow Salton Sea made for wonderful boating, swimming, and fishing.

The good times weren't to last, however. The Salton Sea shoreline was always unstable, being heavily dependent on the agricultural runoff from the nearby farms. Severe floods in the seventies and eighties forced the abandonment of much of the shorefront properties. And then, to make things even worse, the lake began to shirnk rapidly. As the already stressed Colorado River and other Southwestern water supplies had more and more pressure put on them, less and less water was making it to the Salton Sea, and it simply began to evaporate. Since it had no natural outflow, the lake shrank and shrank, and got saltier and saltier, since the salt didn't evaporate with the water.

The New River flows north from Mexico towards the Salton Sea. It's often referred to as the most polluted river in America, consisting of 70% agricultural runoff, 29% sewage, and the rest being wastewater from manufacturing plants. [Image source]

A truly nasty set of problems quickly began to beset the inhabitants of the Imperial Valley. With the collapse of the tourist industry, a massive economic divide rose up. Today, the conditions in the old Salton Sea towns are frankly comparable to the third world, with many people living in cardboard and plywood shantytowns without running water or electricity. One in four residents of the Imperial Valley live in severe poverty. The shoreline, once bordering the towns, lies far in the distance now, with old disused ships lying on foul mudflats in between. The shoreline has receded as much as a mile in places. Meanwhile, the owners of the huge farms of the Imperial Valley are often accused, fairly or not, of being absentee plantation owners- and, in fairness, the economic disparity between their wealth and the nearby poverty is enormous.

The economic woes, however, as severe as they are, are relatively minor problems. The real problem is the Salton Sea itself. As the sea shrinks and becomes more saline, it grows more and more hostile to life. Tilapia and plankton blooms are the only inhabitants of the lake now, since it's now considerably saltier than the ocean itself. Even the salt resistant Tilapia are dying off in huge numbers- in 1999, 8 million of them died in a single day, washing up onto the shore in a band three miles wide and 10 miles long. Dead fish litter the shores of the lake, so thick on the north shore that they have to be waded through like deep snow. All that agricultural runoff, industrial contaminants, and sewage that ran into the lake over the years? It settled to the bottom of the lake. As the lake shrinks, that toxic dust gets exposed. Combined with the dead fish lying everywhere, it's turned the Salton Sea into the foulest smelling major body of water in America. Mud volcanoes have begun emitting foul stenches into the air on the east side of the Salton Sea. In 2012, the lake emitted a foul, sulfurous cloud that drifted all the way to Los Angeles, 150 miles away.

The Salton City Beach today. [Image source]

All that toxic dust exposed has significantly more dangerous effects than foul smells, however- it's tailor-made to induce asthma and other lung conditions. 1 in 5 children in Imperial County have been given asthma by the foul dust, and other nasty lung conditions, like Chronic Obstructed Pulmonary Disease and simple lung infections, are absolutely rampant as well. (Coachella Valley, also bordering the Salton Sea, has similar problems- ironic for a name more associated with an ostentatious music festival than crippling poverty and an environmental crisis.) Cancer rates in the county are significantly above the national average as well. The destitute poor in the Imperial Valley have essentially become climate refugees in America, trapped inside their own homes. If you let your kids outside, they're going to get asthma or have an asthma attack triggered. These people often simply can't afford to move elsewhere.

As the lake shrinks, the West faces the real risk of a new Dust Bowl- this time, however, with toxic/carcinogenic dust storms. (This is already occurring in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, where the Aral Sea has been dried up by old Soviet agricultural projects.) And all those migratory birds and seabirds? They're being poisoned en masse (mostly due to avian botulism) by the lake itself. In 1996, over 150,000 grebes died at the lake, with the survivors so disoriented that "they stood still while gulls tore into their flesh and began eating them on the spot."

Mud volcanoes on the shore of the Salton Sea. [Image source]

Solving the Salton Sea problem is a critical one, and one that's being addressed- but there's not a lot of reason for hope. A 2003 water management deal worked out between the California and federal governments, the wealthy local farmers, and San Diego (the poorer inhabitants weren't particularly involved in the process, of course) expired last year. It wasn't a particularly good solution to the drying up of the Salton Sea, but it was better than the 10-year plan that replaced it, which is little more than frantic plastering of bandaids on the problem. The Obama administration had pleged the federal government's assistance in preventing the further shrinking of the Salton Sea, but the Trump administration, thanks to their consistent disdain for the environment and their ongoing attempts to destroy the Obama legacy in every shape and form, has withdrawn that commitment. Some have proposed piping in water over the mountains from the Pacific to refill the sea, but the money and the political will to do so are lacking.

Along with the sheer mediocrity of the 10-year plan, the Trump administration has effectively canceled all further federal efforts to control the decline of the Salton Sea. There's little case for anything but pessimism here. There is no best case scenario for the Salton Sea.

Salt encrusted, abandoned buildings on the east coast of the Salton Sea. [Image source]

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Bibliography:

• Cadillac Desert, by Marc Reisner
• Dirt: The Erosion of Civilization, by David R. Montgomery
• https://www.theverge.com/2018/6/6/17433294/salton-sea-crisis-drying-up-asthma-toxic-dust-pictures
• https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/05/04/the-dying-sea
• https://kmir.com/2017/03/28/salton-sea-residents-react-to-epa-rollbacks/
• https://www.desertsun.com/story/news/environment/2017/01/20/big-unfinished-business-trump-colorado-river-deals-shrinking-salton-sea/96846680/
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salton_Sea
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_River_(Mexico%E2%80%93United_States)
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_Valley