The Salton Sea—California’s largest lake—faces an environmental crisis. The already-shrinking desert lake will receive less water starting next year, which will accelerate the exposure of toxic dust along its shore, increase its already high salinity, and reduce a food source and habitat for hundreds of bird species that rely on the lake. The sea, which was created by a break in a Colorado River irrigation canal in the 1900s, for decades relied on irrigation runoff from local farms for sustenance.