California officials pressed Congress yesterday to step up federal efforts to address the rapidly growing public health crisis at the Salton Sea. Located near the Mexico border, the sea is California’s largest lake, covering more than 300 square miles. But the Salton is rapidly drying up due to reduced agricultural runoff, drought, heat and a 2003 water transfer that let San Diego take its water.
In a congressional hearing Thursday that starkly illuminated partisan divides, California Democrats called on the federal government to provide greater assistance in remedying environmental and public health crises at the Salton Sea. All but one GOP members were absent, and the one who did attend criticized the organizers for holding the hearing.
It’s been nearly two decades since a controversial deal transferred huge amounts of Colorado River water out of the Imperial Valley and away from the Salton Sea, but still no long-term solution has been found to cover thousands of acres of toxic dust exposed at California’s largest lake.
A House committee will meet Thursday to discuss the deteriorating public health crisis at a Southern California lake. The House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Water, Oceans and Wildlife will review federal and state efforts to address problems at the Salton Sea. The Salton Sea is California’s largest lake at about 350 square miles, fed by runoff from the crop fields of the Imperial Valley, an agricultural powerhouse.
The Salton Sea presents one of California’s most pressing ecological and environmental justice crises. The shrinking sea threatens habitat for millions of fish and birds, and as the sea’s shoreline recedes, a pollutant-laced dust spills into nearby communities and threatens the health of 650,000 people living nearby.
Do you have an idea for how to address the public health and environmental crises around the Salton Sea? Are you concerned the state is far behind on implementing solutions? You can let them know this month.
The California Natural Resources Agency announced it will be hosting a new round of public engagement sessions in September to get input to assist in the development of wildlife habitat restoration and dust suppression projects for the Salton Sea Management Program’s 10-year plan.
Health experts say the Salton Sea poses a health risk to the residents who live around it, especially in the age of coronavirus. The lake’s continued evaporation is already making Valley residents sick, and it could make virus patients even sicker. Farmlands in Imperial County use less water from the Colorado River than ever before. Most of the river’s water now goes to cities like San Diego and Los Angeles. That means less irrigation water drains into the Salton Sea. It’s rapidly shrinking.
As if a global pandemic was not enough, the tumultuous legislative session comes to a close as much of the state is on fire. Understandably, lawmakers had already significantly pared down their legislative packages to focus on a response to COVID-19. And, then last week many important bills on environmental justice and natural resources stalled.
Long-term fixes for the ever-shrinking Salton Sea remain stalled as California Natural Resources Agency officials on Wednesday revealed they have been unable to find an analyst to study proposed solutions to a nearly two decades-old problem.
Eleven different plans, submitted in 2018, suggested methods of importing water from the Sea of Cortez or the Pacific Ocean to decrease salinity and reverse water losses at the Salton Sea, which have exposed a toxic playa laced with pesticides and other pollutants. Although some researchers who study the lake write off the plans as financial and logistical pipe dreams, CNRA still needs to study them as part of the process to determine a long-term solution.
Following the Imperial Irrigation District’s recent win on a monumental water case in California’s appellate court against Michael Abatti, the water district is back in court filing the opening brief against the other large water district is Southern California, the Metropolitan Water District.
Last March, MWD took the unprecedented move to cut IID out of intrastate negotiations on the Drought Contingency Plan, promising to pay IID’s water bill to Lake Mead if water elevations shrank to 1,074 feet, triggering California’s response to the drought.
