The Salton Sea continues to degrade.

The Salton Sea, California’s largest lake in southeastern California, is experiencing a crisis of major proportions. It has been reduced in size by the drought of the Colorado River that feeds it and its waters are highly polluted, endangering the health of nearby communities. In today’s report, Ruben Tapia presents the root cause of this crisis and who is affected.

“The degradation of the Salton Sea continues. The water recedes and exposes more and more toxic sand that was once covered by water.”

For environmentalist Moises Hernandez of the Sierra Club, this degradation is happening for two reasons, the severe drought of the Colorada River and the polluted water that runs off from agricultural fields ends up in the lake.

“That water enters the farmers in the area and the water that comes from that process enters the salt sea and now the water that comes from the Colorado has diminished a lot, so the fact that the water in the lake disappears is a very big and continuous problem”.

And it is a serious problem, because with the decrease in the flow of the Colorado River, thousands of acres of the seabed have been left in the air. When the wind blows, it causes dust and sand chutes full of salt and toxic substances that are seriously affecting the Latino communities that live and work in the agricultural fields and the service sector.

Now the toxins found in that sand create health problems, give a bad smell and pollute the air. Respiratory diseases and asthma are on the rise, especially in low-income communities.

And not a few are impacted.

Right now in the region, one in five children suffers from asthma and it has been noted in several studies that contaminants from agricultural pesticides enter the lake. They also cause cancer. So, unfortunately, the problem is very big”.

The Sierra Club’s environmentalist points out that exposure to the toxins concentrated in the sands of the Salton Sea not only affects nearby communities, but the air can throw them 20 or even 50 miles away from the area.

But the solution is not only to bring more water to the Salton Sea, because the concentration of toxics has reached such a level that the chemicals generate toxic bubbles that float in the waters of the Salton Sea.

“Now they are also gathering these chemicals above the lake, floating on top of the water and making bubbles. And these bubbles are also already being released into the air’.

The California government is well aware of that problem. Six years ago, it presented a plan to restore 30,000 acres where the lake has been depleted by drought, says Miguel Hernandez, head of Public Affairs for the California Natural Resources Agency’s Salton Sea Management Program.

“A ten-year plan that started in 2018, which is committed to bringing restoration projects around Salto itself, on approximately 30,000 acres at different points in areas where water is expected or has initially subsided, which is the shoreline.”

With that resources they have developed several restoration projects in the southern part of the Salton Sea, where it flows into the New River, concludes state official Miguel Hernandez.

“There is the largest project in the state, which currently has a footprint of approximately 5,000 acres, with the purpose of creating aquatic habitat by creating different water ponds, in a way recreating what existed there when there was water.”
For their part, the impacted communities have been very active in pushing for solutions. That will be the subject of the next report.

This is part of the “Cuando se seca el Arroyo” series, funded in part by The Walton Family Foundation.