Southern California’s Salton Sea—approximately 232 feet (70 m)
below sea level— is one of the world’s largest inland seas. It
has 130 miles of shoreline and is larger than Lake Tahoe.
The sea was created in 1905 when the Colorado River broke through
a series of dikes, flooding a salty basin known as the Salton
Sink in the Imperial Valley. The sea is an important stopping
point for 1 million migratory waterfowl, and serves as critical
habitat for birds moving south to Mexico and Central America.
Overall, the Salton Sea harbors more than 270 species of birds
including ducks, geese, cormorants and pelicans.
… The role of inland saline lakes like the Salton Sea in
providing biofilm to migrating birds is a new and intriguing
line of inquiry and emphasizes the already dire need to
conserve the limited number of stopover habitats suitable for
shorebirds. Saline lakes across the interior western U.S. are
at risk of ecological collapse as fresh water is diverted away
and salinity rises to unhealthy levels. This puts millions of
birds already devastated by habitat loss at further risk and
exposes human residents to toxic sediments as shorelines recede
and form large dust clouds. Maintaining the ecological function
of these lakes is essential to both public health and the
recovery of migratory bird populations in the western United
States.
… Perhaps it would be better to develop less water-intensive
developments. Recreation is certainly what were known for, but
at what cost? Each golf course uses approximately 1,000-acre
feet of water yearly (326,000,000 gallons of water).
Before the existence of the Salton Sea, the Colorado River
created ancient Lake Cahuilla many times over thousands of
years, making it the largest fresh water inland lake in
California. Now the Salton Sea is on the brink of a health and
environmental disaster that will impact all of Southern
California. We are currently all affected by the some of the
worst air quality in the nation. —Written by Kerry Berman, interpretive guide, I-naturalist,
author of “Enchanted Valley Palm Springs and Beyond”
The Salton Sea is a terminal saltwater lake. It’s a flooded
basin with no natural outlet, similar to the Great Salt Lake or
the Aral Sea. And the Salton Sea is shrinking. One of the
reasons for that is the Imperial Water Transfer deal that has
brought hundreds of thousands of acre feet of water to San
Diego over the last two decades. The deal, signed 21 years ago,
meant the Imperial Valley began transferring excess water from
the valley’s farm fields to San Diego’s water taps. That meant
a lot less farm runoff that had been sustaining the Salton
Sea. San Diego State University economics professor Ryan
Abman said the biggest effects of that conservation plan were
seen about eight years into the agreement. “So really, after
2011, we see a noticeable increase in the rate of decline of
the water level and that leads to an increase in the increased
rate of playa exposure. So more of this dust-emitting surface
is being exposed every single year,” Abman said.
… The Salton Sea region is facing economic pressure to become
a substantial domestic supplier of lithium, placing greater
challenges on lower-income communities that already face
significant disparities – yet contribute so much to the
prosperity and quality-of-life of others. … This year, state
leaders have a chance to place a climate bond on the
November ballot, which would give voters an opportunity to
approve important environmental protections and clean energy
projects. This bond can benefit all areas of the state, while
also providing $400 million to the Salton Sea region and $15
million to establish a conservancy. -Written by Silvia Paz, executive director of
Alianza Coachella Valley, and former chair of California’s
Lithium Valley Commission.
The Salton Sea is more than a district priority, and it is
disheartening to learn that many state officials view it as a
problem for only our local officials to solve. Over the next
few weeks Gov. Gavin Newsom, the Assembly and the Senate will
make crucial decisions about our state budget and a potential
Climate Resilience Bond. It is vital for them to understand
that protecting the Sea is a statewide priority. The Salton Sea
is surrounded by several unique and rapidly growing communities
across Riverside and Imperial counties, ranging in size from
231 residents in Bombay Beach to approximately 44,000 residents
in El Centro. All these communities face significant health
risks and environmental justice concerns related to the Salton
Sea and a number of other issues in the region. -Written by Dora Cecilia Armenta, who has lived with
her family of four in Salton City for 29 years. She is an
active community partner with Leadership Counsel for Justice
and Accountability; and Mariela Loera, the Eastern
Coachella Valley Regional Policy Manager with the Leadership
Counsel for Justice and Accountability.
Back in 2003, farmers in California’s Imperial Valley agreed to
send some of their Colorado River water to cities on the coast.
The deal was touted as a win for thirsty Californians and a
boon for efforts to conserve water. But the deal also caused
dangerous pollution for those living near the Salton Sea,
according to a new study published in the American Journal of
Agricultural Economics on Wednesday. For the study, researchers
looked at 20 years of daily air pollution data collected from
around the inland and heavily saline Salton Sea between 1998 to
2018. As the water-transfer program reduced agricultural runoff
that replenishes the sea, once-underwater lakebed was exposed
to wind, leading to increased dust and air pollutants that can
cause heart and respiratory issues, they found.
Around the world, demand for lithium is surging, and the
Imperial Valley is in a strong position to help meet that need.
State and local leaders have been working hard to ensure that
the communities of the valley will see more far-reaching
benefits this time if the industry continues to grow. As
California races to curb carbon emissions, advocates and
researchers say the growth of the lithium industry could be a
test of a so-called ”just transition.” That’s a movement to
cleaner energy sources that strengthens local communities,
rather than hollowing them out. … Lithium is a soft,
silvery-white metal that’s found in many places around the
world, including in hard rock, layers of sediment and
belowground pockets of salty water. It’s used to lubricate
aircraft engines, added as a fuel to military-grade torpedoes
and is prescribed by doctors as a treatment for bipolar
disorder.
Learn the history and challenges facing the West’s most dramatic
and developed river.
The Layperson’s Guide to the Colorado River Basin introduces the
1,450-mile river that sustains 40 million people and millions of
acres of farmland spanning seven states and parts of northern
Mexico.
The 28-page primer explains how the river’s water is shared and
managed as the Southwest transitions to a hotter and drier
climate.
This tour explored the lower Colorado River firsthand where virtually every drop of the river is allocated, yet demand is growing from myriad sources — increasing population, declining habitat, drought and climate change.
The 1,450-mile river is a lifeline to some 40 million people in the Southwest across seven states, 30 tribal nations and Mexico. How the Lower Basin states – Arizona, California and Nevada – use and manage this water to meet agricultural, urban, environmental and industrial needs was the focus of this tour.
Hilton Garden Inn Las Vegas Strip South
7830 S Las Vegas Blvd
Las Vegas, NV 89123
This special Foundation water tour journeyed along the Eastern Sierra from the Truckee River to Mono Lake, through the Owens Valley and into the Mojave Desert to explore a major source of water for Southern California, this year’s snowpack and challenges for towns, farms and the environment.
This tour explored the lower Colorado River firsthand where virtually every drop of the river is allocated, yet demand is growing from myriad sources — increasing population, declining habitat, drought and climate change.
The 1,450-mile river is a lifeline to some 40 million people in the Southwest across seven states, 30 tribal nations and Mexico. How the Lower Basin states – Arizona, California and Nevada – use and manage this water to meet agricultural, urban, environmental and industrial needs was the focus of this tour.
Hyatt Place Las Vegas At Silverton Village
8380 Dean Martin Drive
Las Vegas, NV 89139
The lower Colorado River has virtually every drop allocated, yet demand is growing from myriad sources — increasing population, declining habitat, drought and climate change.
The 1,450-mile river is a lifeline to 40 million people in the Southwest across seven states, 30 tribal nations and Mexico. How the Lower Basin states – Arizona, California and Nevada – use and manage this water to meet agricultural, urban, environmental and industrial needs was the focus of this tour.
Hyatt Place Las Vegas At Silverton Village
8380 Dean Martin Drive
Las Vegas, NV 89139
For more than 20 years, Tanya
Trujillo has been immersed in the many challenges of the Colorado
River, the drought-stressed lifeline for 40 million people from
Denver to Los Angeles and the source of irrigation water for more
than 5 million acres of winter lettuce, supermarket melons and
other crops.
Trujillo has experience working in both the Upper and Lower
Basins of the Colorado River, basins that split the river’s water
evenly but are sometimes at odds with each other. She was a
lawyer for the state of New Mexico, one of four states in the
Upper Colorado River Basin, when key operating guidelines for
sharing shortages on the river were negotiated in 2007. She later
worked as executive director for the Colorado River Board of
California, exposing her to the different perspectives and
challenges facing California and the other states in the river’s
Lower Basin.
State work to improve wildlife habitat and tamp down dust at California’s ailing Salton Sea is finally moving forward. Now the sea may be on the verge of getting the vital ingredient needed to supercharge those restoration efforts – money.
The shrinking desert lake has long been a trouble spot beset by rising salinity and unhealthy, lung-irritating dust blowing from its increasingly exposed bed. It shadows discussions of how to address the Colorado River’s two-decade-long drought because of its connection to the system. The lake is a festering health hazard to nearby residents, many of them impoverished, who struggle with elevated asthma risk as dust rises from the sea’s receding shoreline.
Out of sight and out of mind to most
people, the Salton Sea in California’s far southeast corner has
challenged policymakers and local agencies alike to save the
desert lake from becoming a fetid, hyper-saline water body
inhospitable to wildlife and surrounded by clouds of choking
dust.
The sea’s problems stretch beyond its boundaries in Imperial and
Riverside counties and threaten to undermine multistate
management of the Colorado River. A 2019 Drought Contingency Plan for the
Lower Colorado River Basin was briefly stalled when the Imperial
Irrigation District, holding the river’s largest water
allocation, balked at participating in the plan because, the
district said, it ignored the problems of the Salton Sea.
This event explored the lower Colorado River where virtually every drop of the river is allocated, yet demand is growing from myriad sources — increasing population, declining habitat, drought and climate change.
The 1,450-mile river is a lifeline to 40 million people in the Southwest across seven states and Mexico. How the Lower Basin states – Arizona, California and Nevada – use and manage this water to meet agricultural, urban, environmental and industrial needs was the focus of this tour.
Even as stakeholders in the Colorado River Basin celebrate the recent completion of an unprecedented drought plan intended to stave off a crashing Lake Mead, there is little time to rest. An even larger hurdle lies ahead as they prepare to hammer out the next set of rules that could vastly reshape the river’s future.
Set to expire in 2026, the current guidelines for water deliveries and shortage sharing, launched in 2007 amid a multiyear drought, were designed to prevent disputes that could provoke conflict.
One of California Gov. Gavin
Newsom’s first actions after taking office was to appoint Wade
Crowfoot as Natural Resources Agency secretary. Then, within
weeks, the governor laid out an ambitious water agenda that
Crowfoot, 45, is now charged with executing.
That agenda includes the governor’s desire for a “fresh approach”
on water, scaling back the conveyance plan in the Sacramento-San
Joaquin Delta and calling for more water recycling, expanded
floodplains in the Central Valley and more groundwater recharge.
For the bulk of her career, Jayne
Harkins has devoted her energy to issues associated with the
management of the Colorado River, both with the U.S. Bureau of
Reclamation and with the Colorado River Commission of Nevada.
Now her career is taking a different direction. Harkins, 58, was
appointed by President Trump last August to take the helm of the
United States section of the U.S.-Mexico agency that oversees
myriad water matters between the two countries as they seek to
sustainably manage the supply and water quality of the Colorado
River, including its once-thriving Delta in Mexico, and other
rivers the two countries share. She is the first woman to be
named the U.S. Commissioner of the International Boundary and
Water Commission for either the United States or Mexico in the
commission’s 129-year history.
This tour explored the lower Colorado River where virtually every drop of the river is allocated, yet demand is growing from myriad sources — increasing population, declining habitat, drought and climate change.
The 1,450-mile river is a lifeline to 40 million people in the Southwest across seven states and Mexico. How the Lower Basin states – Arizona, California and Nevada – use and manage this water to meet agricultural, urban, environmental and industrial needs is the focus of this tour.
Silverton Hotel
3333 Blue Diamond Road
Las Vegas, NV 89139
There’s going to be a new governor
in California next year – and a host of challenges both old and
new involving the state’s most vital natural resource, water.
So what should be the next governor’s water priorities?
That was one of the questions put to more than 150 participants
during a wrap-up session at the end of the Water Education
Foundation’s Sept. 20 Water Summit in Sacramento.
We explored the lower Colorado River where virtually every drop
of the river is allocated, yet demand is growing from myriad
sources — increasing population, declining habitat, drought and
climate change.
The 1,450-mile river is a lifeline to 40 million people in
the Southwest across seven states and Mexico. How the Lower Basin
states – Arizona, California and Nevada – use and manage this
water to meet agricultural, urban, environmental and industrial
needs was the focus of this tour.
Hampton Inn Tropicana
4975 Dean Martin Drive, Las Vegas, NV 89118
California voters may experience a sense of déjà vu this year when they are asked twice in the same year to consider water bonds — one in June, the other headed to the November ballot.
Both tackle a variety of water issues, from helping disadvantaged communities get clean drinking water to making flood management improvements. But they avoid more controversial proposals, such as new surface storage, and they propose to do some very different things to appeal to different constituencies.
Tickets are now on sale for the Water Education Foundation’s April 11-13 tour of the Lower Colorado River.
Don’t miss this opportunity to visit key sites along one of the nation’s most famous rivers, including a private tour of Hoover Dam, Central Arizona Project’s Mark Wilmer pumping plant and the Havasu National Wildlife Refuge. The tour also visits the Salton Sea, Slab City, the All-American Canal and farming regions in the Imperial and Coachella valleys.
This issue of Western Water discusses the challenges
facing the Colorado River Basin resulting from persistent
drought, climate change and an overallocated river, and how water
managers and others are trying to face the future.
This three-day, two-night tour explored the lower Colorado River
where virtually every drop of the river is allocated, yet demand
is growing from myriad sources — increasing population,
declining habitat, drought and climate change.
The 1,450-mile river is a lifeline to 40 million people in
the Southwest across seven states and Mexico. How the Lower Basin
states – Arizona, California and Nevada – use and manage this
water to meet agricultural, urban, environmental and industrial
needs is the focus of this tour.
Best Western McCarran Inn
4970 Paradise Road
Las Vegas, NV 89119
Scientifically and legislatively, lakes are indistinguishable
from
ponds, but lakes generally are considered to be longer and
deeper lentic, or still, waters. In the 18th and
19th centuries, scientists attempted to distinguish
the two more formally, stating that ponds were shallow enough to
allow sunlight to penetrate to the bottom, but this exists
today as an unofficial point.
Fearing an imminent public health threat, the director of the
University of California, Irvine’s Salton Sea Initiative said the
State Water Resources Control Board should step in and regulate
the rate of water transferred from the Imperial Valley to coastal
California as part of the Quantification Settlement Agreement.
The shallow, briny inland lake at the southeastern edge of
California is slowly evaporating and becoming more saline –
threatening the habitat for fish and birds and worsening air
quality as dust from the dry lakebed is whipped by the constant
winds.
(Read this excerpt from the May/June 2015 issue along with
the editor’s note. Click here to
subscribe to Western Water and get full access.)
This 25-minute documentary-style DVD, developed in partnership
with the California Department of Water Resources, provides an
excellent overview of climate change and how it is already
affecting California. The DVD also explains what scientists
anticipate in the future related to sea level rise and
precipitation/runoff changes and explores the efforts that are
underway to plan and adapt to climate.
A new look for our most popular product! And it’s the perfect
gift for the water wonk in your life.
Our 24×36-inch California Water Map is widely known for being the
definitive poster that shows the integral role water plays in the
state. On this updated version, it is easier to see California’s
natural waterways and man-made reservoirs and aqueducts
– including federally, state and locally funded
projects – the wild and scenic rivers system, and
natural lakes. The map features beautiful photos of
California’s natural environment, rivers, water projects,
wildlife, and urban and agricultural uses and the
text focuses on key issues: water supply, water use, water
projects, the Delta, wild and scenic rivers and the Colorado
River.
As part of the historic Colorado
River Delta, the Salton Sea regularly filled and dried for
thousands of years due to its elevation of 237 feet below
sea level.
The most recent version of the Salton Sea was formed in 1905 when
the Colorado River broke
through a series of dikes and flooded the seabed for two years,
creating California’s largest inland body of water. The
Salton Sea, which is saltier than the Pacific Ocean, includes 130
miles of shoreline and is larger than Lake Tahoe.
The Pacific Flyway is one of four
major North American migration routes for birds, especially
waterfowl, and extends from Alaska and Canada, through
California, to Mexico and South America. Each year, birds follow
ancestral patterns as they travel the flyway on their annual
north-south migration. Along the way, they need stopover sites
such as wetlands with suitable habitat and food supplies. In
California, 90 percent of historic wetlands have been lost.
Southern California’s Imperial Valley is home to California’s
earliest agricultural
drainage success story, one that converted a desert landscape
to an agricultural one, but at the same time created far reaching
consequences.
Water from the Colorado River transformed the sagebrush and
desert sands of the Imperial, Coachella and Palo Verde valleys
into lush, green agricultural fields. The growing season is
year-round, the water plentiful and the local economies are based
almost entirely on farming. As the waters of the Colorado River
allowed the deserts to bloom, they allowed southern California
cities like Los Angeles and San Diego to boom. Suburbs, jobs and
people followed, and the population within the six counties
served by Metropolitan Water District of Southern California
(MWD) grew from 2.8 million in 1930 to more than 17 million
today.