The Salton Sea is dying. Have this season’s rains put any significant amount of water into it?
All that rain might have raised the level of the Salton Sea but it won’t necessarily help to bring it back to life. The problem is there’s a lot of runoff from the surrounding area, and that comes with a big load of agricultural chemicals.
Which isn’t new. The water has always been less than pure. The lake is dying because it’s shrunk so much that it isn’t even good for power sports and the like. The shore receded from the resorts and marinas decades ago.
I find myself creeped out by the vast developments with only one house every few blocks. Must be weird as hell to live there.
This article says the California rains “largely avoided the Salton Sea.” And this is the last year of an agreement that sent mitigation flows to the sea, so things will most likely be worse next year.
You can plot the water elevation here - my link is elevation since 2000, but they have data going back to 1987.
If you zoom in to the last three months, you can see the elevation rose by about 8 inches, which is in line with the typical annual winter recovery. So it doesn’t appear like the heavy rain elsewhere in the state has helped significantly.
As the Salton Sea was created purely by mistake by a cut in the bank of the Colorado River to battle silt build up which overflowed the canal. The water flow was cut off two years when the repairs were complete so no amount of rain will really fill it.
If weather variations were enough to fill the sink it would have had water before that accident resulted in it’s creation.
(Ignoring any drastic changes in climate that produce new active drainages)
They are making a huge mistake in spending billions to continue this mistake.
This year’s budget had $80 million for restoration and management. I’ve seen estimates for full-scale restoration from $1.5 to $9 billion. The cost of doing nothing has been estimated at $70 billion over 30 years. The biggest issue is toxic dust that will blow into population centers and critical agriculture areas.
A secondary concern is that the lake has become a critical stopover point for migrating birds that have lost their natural habitats.
The money they are spending now isn’t continuing a mistake, it’s attempting to recover from one made a long time ago.
Well there is a serious concern about PM10 but the local residents are not really considering the long term viability and they want the economic boost.
The reality is that due to population growth in the Southwest it is highly likely that the surplus in the Colorado river system will not exist even for core needs of California.
But lets put this in context, here is a picture of the Colorado river delta as it looks today.
https://www.nature.org/cs/groups/webcontent/@web/@colorado/documents/media/colorado-river-delta-today.jpg
Due to growing use in the six states in the compact and the Minute 319 rules with Mexico and the fact that California has had access to “surplus” water which will become more and more scarce diverting water to the Salton Sea will not be a long term solution.
A large portion of the reason the level is dropping outside of the drought is because famers had to implement water conservation methods which reduced the inflow.
Water is gold in the west and it will be a significant source of tension or possible civil unrest in the future.
I am unable to locate scholarly articles on the impact of pm10 due to the lake drying up but I doubt the worries about Coachella’s real-estate market will drive 5 other states and Mexico to gift the state water resources to protect a tourist attraction based on an accidental reservoir.
We crossed posts but note that the bird migration issue was caused by using all of the water within the Colorado river system and reverting the delta to a desert.
While I fully support actions to protect critical habitat it is not a simple problem or solution.
Without massive increases in water conservation for growing citys or reduction in agriculture, which may also cause air quality issues, it is going to come down to user priority.
To be clear California would be in very serious trouble today if the upstream states used their allocations.
Total rainfall since October 1 at Palm Springs (closest weather station I could find) is 6.97 in. Average is 4.48. So it’s been above average, but hardly enough to refill a desert basin.
Absolutely agree. I’m not advocating for a course of action here. My point to DrDeth is that there is a cost to doing something, and there is a cost to doing nothing. It’s not as simple as saying “quit spending money on this.”
Birds will die and some species likely go extinct if the Sea dries up. That might end up as the only alternative, but any decisions made should be based on a full understanding of the consequences. And no matter what, something needs to be done about the dust or there will be serious agriculture and human health impacts.
It’s already a serious situation. The area downwind has one of the highest childhood asthma and emergency room visit rates in the state.
So has the recent rainfall helped the Colorado upstream (i.e. reversed the decline behind the Hoover dam)? Or did the high rainfall/snowfall not reach that far west?
It is about 13 feet higher than it was at the end of last year. Data here.
That data shows Lake Mead was 5.6 feet higher in Feb 2017 than Feb 2016, which puts it on par with 2015 and still lower than any year in the preceding 60. It’s premature to call it a reversal of the decline at this point.
Cite that species will go extinct?
Yes, indeed there will be impacts. But the alternative is to pour cash and much needed water down this hole* forever. * Just bite the bullet and let it go.
Several of the birds that use the Salton Sea as a stopover are threatened or endangered. Several articles mention this threat. Here’s one, I’m sure you can find others if you are interested.
I’m curious how you envision “biting the bullet and letting it go” play out. Does that mean no mitigation of the toxic dust? No matter what, significant sums of money are needed whether the direction is maintaining the sea or taking a different approach. Doing nothing isn’t really an option.