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An ongoing effort to preserve the quality of life around California’s largest lake is taking on a renewed emphasis.

A series of public hearings and workshops will continue through the summer under the auspices of the Salton Sea Task Force which was created last year. The immediate emphasis is on dust control. The task force says managing the Salton Sea’s natural, agricultural, and municipal water inflows to maximize bird and fish habitat and minimize fine-particle air pollution will allow California to protect regional health, ecological wealth and a stable water supply.

Haven’t these chilly mornings and evenings felt nice? Don’t take the drizzle and gray for granted. That marine layer is expected to dissipate this weekend as a serious heat wave threatening to break high-temperature records lands in Los Angeles.

“There is a very real chance that this heat wave will be one for the record books,” says the National Weather Service. Temperatures will start rising steadily Friday. They’ll reach the 90-degree range on Saturday, creep into the mid-90s on Sunday, and peak Monday, when max temperatures in the valley will soar somewhere between 110 and 118 degrees, according the Weather Service.

San Diego imports 80 percent of its water, with the Colorado River supplying about 63 percent, and 20 percent coming from Sierra Nevada runoff funneled from northern California via the State Water Project. The remaining 17 percent comes from local sources – a mix of rainwater, groundwater, desalination and recycled water.

While these numbers vary from year to year, what hasn’t changed is the fact that San Diego has relied heavily on imported water for many decades. With climate change heralding warmer weather and prolonged droughts, this impacts the level of snowpack and river flow, which in turn threatens the region’s water security.

The Salton Sea has gone from a midcentury vacation spot for movie stars to a post-apocalyptic desert with mounds of dead fish here, gurgling “mud pots” there, blasts from a military bombing range on the horizon and sulfuric stench everywhere.

The worst is yet to come. California’s largest lake (350 square miles) is about to be turned into a toxic dust bowl with potentially catastrophic health consequences for about 650,000 people who live in and around the sprawling drainage basin.

Although recent rains have been a welcome sight in California, drought conditions continue to increase fire danger prompting Cal Fire to suspend burn permits in San Diego and Imperial counties.

This suspension takes effect immediately and bans all residential outdoor burning of landscape debris like branches and leaves. “San Diego lives with the threat of wildfire year round and it is critical that the public do their part to be extra fire safe when outdoors” said Cal Fire Chief Tony Mecham.