Travels With Connie #47 The Salton Sea Then and Now

Sometimes I know exactly where I am going. In that case it’s easy, pick a route and go.

More often I have an idea where I’d like to end up, and generally speaking a direction to go.

Once in a while I just follow the front wheel and see where it takes me.

This area was once a part of the Pacific Ocean. A vast inland sea covered much of Southern California. During the Pleistocene glacial melts the Colorado River formed a huge delta in the area that eventually carried enough silt to the ocean to block it entirely. Since then, the area of the Salton Sea has seen a 4-500 year cycle of dry to freshwater to high salinity as the water evaporated.



The breach of the Colorado River in 1905 gave us the New River, the Alamo River and the Salton Sea. Since then the lake has been shrinking, leaving it with extreme salinity and highly polluted. After a heyday of recreation in the 50s and 60s, the lake has been largely abandoned. Settlements around the lake are primarily related to agriculture, and exist in spite of the lake.

What is to be done?

I have good news and bad news. There is a sizable fraction of the people of Southern California that don't give a hoot about the Salton Sea. The good news is that the environmental community is not only aware but actively pushing for solutions to the crisis involving birds and the Pacific Flyway. As agriculture expands and thrives in the valley, the stop offs for migratory birds decrease. Particularly successful has been the cooperation with the local Rice growers who water on a specific schedule all winter to allow huge areas of fresh water to the birds.

In the end, the lake might save itself. There are a couple of dynamics that might force the issue. As the lake level receeds there are big patches of polluted sand exposed that used to be lake bottom. The Santa Ana winds blow that sand right up the Cochalla valley and into Los Angeles creating dust pollution AND a health hazard. Likewise the twice yearly stench from the dying fish drifts all the way to LA. So it would be much in L.A.s best intrest to do something positive with the Salton Sea.

The Plans

Multiple plans have been officially introduced to the State of California to save the Salton Sea. The easy answer would be to divert Colorado River water to it, but every single drop from the Colorado is spoken for, for the next 100 years.

Right now, the Sea is at a very critical stage. The agreement with the local Irrigation District that required replenishing water be diverted to the Sea expired in 2017. Since that time the shrinkage of the lake has increased.

Currently, the State has 11 proposals that would increase water flow to the Salton Sea. There is no official 'favorite' out of these, but the ideas are flowing if not the water.

Possibly the most exciting proposal to me is from a commerical company that would entail 20 miles of salt water canal from the Gulf of California to the Salton Sea. There the water would be desalinated using Solar and Geothermal energy and sold to Southern California water districts, to the tune of 1,000,000 acre feet of fresh water to be sold. The salt water could be easily diverted to Salton Sea which would vastly lower the salt content of the sea and provide increased water surface for the birds and fish.



Rather than the sunset of the life of the Sea it is possible that a new day is dawning. I sincerely hope so.

Thanks for coming along for the ride.

All words and photos in this post are mine, for better or worse. I relied heavily on Wikipedia to get historical and current data.

You want some real motorcycle travel? Check out Velimir. That’s some kind of motorcycle writing.

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