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Until recently, most people weren’t familiar with the Salton Sea. But as California’s largest lake has rapidly receded over the last several years, it has begun to grab national headlines as the site of several doomsday scenarios for public health, the environment and the economy.

As the water level drops, miles of lake bed are exposed. The parched earth gets kicked up into hazardous dust storms that contribute to the highest asthma-hospitalization rate in the state. Left unabated, the Salton Sea lake bed could become the largest source of particulate air pollution in North America, threatening the health of hundreds of thousands of people in California and the Mexican state of Baja.

San Jacinto Valley native Randy Record was reelected Tuesday, Oct. 11, to a second two-year term as chairman of the board of Metropolitan Water District, which wholesales water to 26 member agencies in Southern California. Record has served on the Perris-based Eastern Municipal Water District board since 2001 and has represented that regional agency on Metropolitan’s board since 2003. During his first term as Metropolitan chairman, the district confronted unmatched drought conditions, according to a news release.

San Diego Coastkeeper has released a statement in response to latest release from California State Water Resources Control Board, Statewide Water Conservation Drops Below 18 Percent in August. This statement is submitted by San Diego Coastkeeper’s Legal and Policy Director Matt O’Malley: “We are still very much in a drought. Our southern coast lies somewhere between extreme to exceptional drought. The monthly conservation numbers released by the State Water Resources Control Board yesterday prove that without the statewide conservation mandate, we are seeing bad habits once again take hold.”