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.
Throughout most of its 52-mile length, from the Mexicali Valley
in Baja California to southern California’s Salton Sea, the
Alamo River is mostly a weed-choked gulley. Fed in large part
by farm runoff, the river carries with it a safe-eating
advisory from the state of California because of the stew of
contaminants it contains. One small farming community, billing
itself as the carrot capital of the world, recently completed a
project designed to help rid the river of some of its
pollutants and provide homes for threatened and endangered
birds and wildlife, including the Yuma clapper rail. The
31-acre Holtville Alamo River Wetlands Project, a partnership
that includes the Imperial Irrigation District, Imperial
County, the Salton Sea Authority and Desert Wildlife Unlimited,
was awarded $4.6 million in federal funding with $1.6 million
coming from the Bureau of Reclamation’s Salton Sea Program
budget.
For years, residents in California’s Salton Sea area have
experienced adverse health effects. A new UC Davis study,
published in Scientific Reports, reveals that these issues may
stem not only from the drying lake, but also undercounted
emissions released from fertilized soil, which are likely
contributing to the area’s high asthma rates and poor air
quality. Researchers found that nitrogen oxide emissions in the
region’s soil are 10 times higher than what state regulators
allow, negatively impacting area air quality and exceeding
limits of ozone and particulate matter standards. The elevated
emissions come from agricultural practices in the region, where
the sandy soil means large amounts of fertilizer are required
for productive farming. Fertilizer sales have grown by 137% in
Imperial County since 1991, the study also found.
For decades, Southern California’s war on smog has focused on
strategies to reduce pollution from tailpipes and smokestacks.
But one of the main drivers of lung-aggravating smog may be
right underneath our feet, according to new research.
… From the polo grounds of Coachella Valley to the farm
fields in Imperial County, vast stretches of the harsh Colorado
Desert have been converted into verdant fields thanks to
fertilizer and irrigation. Although the conditions are ideal
for plants, the wet, heavily fertilized soil
also creates a feeding frenzy for soil bacteria that release
smog-forming pollution. UC Davis researchers say the soil in
the Salton Sea air basin emits more than 11 tons per day of
nitrogen oxides — about 10 times more smog-forming pollution
than California air regulator officials currently estimate. The
findings underscore the need to better understand how the
management of agricultural land and manicured lawns are
contributing to regional air quality, according to Ian Faloona,
a UC Davis associate professor in the Department of Land, Air
and Water.
City of Holtville officials held a ribbon-cutting ceremony
Thursday morning to celebrate the opening of the city’s
decades-long Wetlands project, conceived by Elwood “Pete”
Mellinger. The $4.6 million, 31-acre project made several
residents joyous at the event, especially Holtville resident
Mary Martinez, whose backyard scene has completely changed with
the project. Years back, the property used to be so filled with
trees that nobody could walk through.
Air quality management commonly aims to mitigate nitrogen oxide
(NOx) emissions from combustion, reducing ozone (O3) and
particulate matter (PM) pollution. Despite such ongoing
efforts, regulations have recently proven ineffective in rural
areas like the Salton Sea Air Basin of Southern California,
which routinely violates O3 and PM air quality standards.
… We conducted a source apportionment of NOx (an
important precursor to both O3 and PM) using nitrogen
stable isotopes of ambient NO2, which revealed a significant
contribution from soil-emitted NOx to the regional budget.
…. Inorganic fertilizer amendments are not regulated,
leading to over-application and nutrient leaching into the
surrounding environment, such as the groundwater, local water
sources, atmosphere, and soils24,28. The objective of this work
is to understand the implications of agricultural practices in
arid agroecosystems of the SSAB on regional air quality.
Replicating a historic survey from 30 years ago, the
Intermountain West Shorebird Survey is a five-year effort to
count shorebirds at more than 200 wetland sites across 11
states in the Intermountain West. The program aims to better
understand shorebirds and their distribution across wetlands,
how that distribution has changed over the past three decades,
and how the wetlands themselves have changed. During peak
migration—a one-to-two-week period in the spring and fall—a
network of volunteers, including state and federal agency
biologists, are on the ground, spotting scopes and binoculars
in hand, counting shorebirds. … This is a photo diary
from two of those survey teams: one on Great Salt Lake, where
over 100 participants surveyed almost the entire lake and its
wetlands in one “Big Day” and the other at Salton Sea, where
surveyors split their survey between three days.
… Imperial County ranks among the most economically
distressed places in California. However, the region also
happens to sit atop massive lithium reserves large enough to
provide for a third of all global demand. And as the renewable
energy transition drives global demand for lithium and other
minerals to power battery packs, investors eyeing the Imperial
Valley have already rebranded it as “Lithium Valley.” Public
officials are heralding a new era of prosperity. But are local
fortunes really changing? Or will the new “lithium gold rush”
follow old, familiar patterns?
The Salton Sea Management Program (SSMP) announced the
expansion of its Species Conservation Habitat (SCH) Project at
the south end of the Salton Sea, aimed at supporting regional
air quality and wildlife. A groundbreaking ceremony, attended
by Secretary for Natural Resources Wade Crowfoot, Deputy
Secretary Samantha Arthur, and other officials, marked the
start of this effort. This expansion adds 750 acres to the SCH
Project, bringing the current area close to 5,000 acres, with
potential growth to nearly 8,000 acres.
Explore 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 is the focus of this tour.
Hilton Garden Inn Las Vegas Strip South
7830 S Las Vegas Blvd
Las Vegas, NV 89123
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
waterbirds, and stretches from Alaska in the north
to Patagonia in 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, 95 percent of historic
wetlands have been lost, yet the Central Valley hosts some of the
world’s largest populations of wintering birds.
The Imperial Valley in the
southeastern corner of California receives the Colorado River
Basin’s single-largest share of water to support much of the
nation’s fruit and vegetable supply and hay for the
cattle and dairy industries.
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.
