The highway sign sucked us right in during our trip in November, 2019. Wow! Water skiers, swimmers, and palm trees — a freshwater paradise amidst the California desert? The wind was blowing at least 40 miles per hour. What a disappointment! I’ve been haunted by the memory of what we witnessed ever since.
The Salton Sea, with its 350 square miles, is the largest lake in California but few Californians know about it and fewer still have ever been there. The Salton Sea, once marketed as the “Salton Riviera,” is dying and so is Bombay Beach and all other vacation facilities around the Salton.
The Salton Sea was created in 1905-6 by a fluke. The Colorado River was overflowing from the snow melt of an unusually heavy winter, and spilled over into a large valley in California which is hundreds of feet below sea level. Some say it was a mistake by engineers working on the irrigation canals. Since its heyday as a glamorous beach resort in the 1950’s and 60’s the Salton has shrunk dramatically. The water level at Bombay Beach has dropped some 20 feet, leaving the water some 100 feet away from the docks and piers — a ghostly abandonment.
Along with the evaporation of water comes the increasing concentration of salt. Not all fish can tolerate much salt, and Salton Sea beaches are littered with the bones of millions of dead fish. There is a stench in the air not only from rotting marine life but also from hydrogen sulfide released naturally from undersea minerals. The hundreds of thousands of birds at the Salton Sea, not only from North America, but also from Asia and South America—more than 400 resident and migratory bird species, some endangered, are being threatened by the pollution.
People who used to boat, fish, swim, and water ski there would rather die than go back into that water. The village of Bombay Beach, about 6 square blocks, is now a dump of mostly abandoned mobile homes littered with trash inside and out. The ghostly remnants are a monument to bad decision-making, bad luck, and broken dreams. Pay attention, because we are looking at the future.
There have been dozens of studies, trying to see if the Salton Sea can be saved. There is intense competition for the water from the Colorado River. It irrigates the agriculture in the surrounding Imperial Valley, which supplies a huge fraction of America’s fruits and vegetables. About 20 percent of the Colorado River’s total water allotment produces 80 percent of the nation’s winter crops, including lettuce, broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, sweet corn, watermelons, cantaloupe, and onions. But without the Salton Sea and its 50 degree wintertime water temperature to warm the Imperial Valley, these crops could not be grown in the winter.
The water also flows from the Colorado to satisfy the needs of the Los Angeles and San Diego areas, housing about 8% of America’s population. The Southwestern US has been in a drought for the past nineteen years. Lake Mead behind Hoover Dam is only about 40% full now.
What has kept the Salton Sea from drying out through natural evaporation years ago is agricultural runoff. But this came at the cost of adding salt, fertilizers, pesticides and other toxic chemicals, including heavy metals. The salt concentration of the Salton is now 4.4 % (25% saltier than the ocean). In 2017 the runoff allocated to the Salton was suddenly decreased 40% by law. When the salt reaches 5.7% there will be another huge kill of millions of the (already selenium-tainted) tilapia, the last major fish species now adapted to the Salton. At that point there will be little for the birds to eat during their winter stay and most will die. The Salton is the hub of the Pacific Flyway. All alternate wintering areas and migration routes for the birds, for example, along the California coast have long since been destroyed by human habitation.
When the Santa Ana winds blow, they gather up choking, toxic dust from the dry part of the Salton Sea and fling it westward to Palm Springs, Riverside, Los Angeles, and yes, even Beverly Hills. The air quality in the Imperial Valley is already terrible, causing high incidence of asthma and other lung diseases. As the Salton Sea dries up, it may continue to make life unlivable for much of Southern California via these dust storms. A pipeline carrying sea water downhill to the Salton would save it but at considerable expense.
Does anybody seriously think that the Salton Sea can be saved because of fish, birds, and cleaner air, when opponents will argue that the Sea itself is kind of a fluky newcomer barely 115 years old? I wouldn’t bet a nickel on it. All economic and political factors point to the inevitable drying up of the Salton Sea as the short-term solution, which will lead to environmental and public health disasters. Apply this kind of “reasoning” to this and many other kinds of environmental problems around the globe, and we have what Jared Diamond’s prescient book from 2004 was called: Collapse. I’m also interested in his newest book called Upheaval.
For a more personal visit to Bombay Beach, there are several documentaries and a number of YouTube videos, some more creepy than others. A good one is
Jim Sudmeier
Luck, WI
February 18, 2020