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.