Posted on 12/28/2002 6:17:56 PM PST by NormsRevenge
Edited on 04/12/2004 5:47:24 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
SALTON CITY, Calif.(AP) - The Salton Sea is California's biggest lake, yet sits in the middle of a desert. It teems with fish but is slowly dying. It was formed by accident but is now the most critical stop for migratory birds in the Pacific.
(Excerpt) Read more at sacbee.com ...
Clusters of motley trailer houses baking in the unbearable heat. You get the eerie feeling somebody is watching you through binoculars waiting to ambush you should you be unlucky enough to have an automotive breakdown. Or maybe I have an overactive imagination. :)
Some of the more glaring errors are:
"It was formed by accident". Not really. Water has intermittenlty occupied this trough for thousands of years.
"Long neglected and often derided, the Salton Sea has become the deal-breaker in the West's war over the Colorado River." The laguna has neither been long neglected nor derided. It has been in continuous use since its modern inception and the drainage system that sustains it are continuously maintained.
"Imperial water officials are holding firm, saying something first must be done about the sea." Imperial water officals are collectively saying they won't give their water rights to the city of San Diego.
"When it comes to Washington people, they really want it to go away."" The people who want it to "go away", in it's present form, are the residents of San Diego not federal bureaucrats.
"The Colorado River created the sea when it burst through a farm dike in 1905". The Colorado River didn't create the lake. Farmers who seriously underestimated the volume of the Colorado River during peak runoff created the lake in its present form. Even if the dikes had held, the irrigation run off would have created the lake in a few years.
"The idea of precious Colorado water sitting in an agricultural sump 227 feet below sea level does not sit well in the thirsty West. Arizona, Nevada and other states that depend on the river don't support using the Colorado to keep the sea alive". If that's the case it seems odd that the favored solution is to give the water to San Diego.
meanwhile, some of the water that socal uses comes from colorado (the other two sources are the mono lake area and the sf bay area).
yet, in nearly two decades here, i've never seen southern californians conserve water. no one in the country washes their cars more than southern californians. apartment building sprinklers turn on automatically, regardless of the need for water. and so on.
i was glad to see the imperial farmers say no to the l.a. and s.d. water grabbers. as one drives on the 8 freeway thru' the imperial valley, one farmer has erected a sign on stacked bales of hay or straw to the effect that it takes water to grow food. uh duh! most city people haven't a clue where their food comes from.
since the imperial water board decision, the rice farmers in the s.f. bay area have offered to sell water to socal.
obviously socal needs water, but i'd like to see people CONSERVE water as denver does. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
One more thing: I forgot to mention the roadside stand that had a huge statue of Paul Bunyan.
The was only one problem....it was headless.
If you want to have a haunted house kind of experience, visit the Salton Sea!
obviously socal needs water, but i'd like to see people CONSERVE water as denver does.
If someone sells them the water and they have to buy it at fair market price, they will learn to conserve.
Wister Wildlife Area in the southeastern part of the Sea is the best snow goose hunting in the southwest. Here's a buddy and "Everette the Wonder Dog" on a good day at the sea.
Darn good fishing at the sea too. It just gets hotter than a Hades down there in the summer.
Colorado River water to state to be cut in 2003
U.S. says it will enforce limits that will affect a supplier to O.C., which says it has several years' reserves.
By SETH HETTENA The Interior Department said Friday that next year it will begin taking away from California enough Colorado River water to supply roughly 1.4 million people annually, ensuring allocations for six other Western states. The cut amounts to 13 percent of the water that California has been taking from the river. That could increase calls for water conservation, push desalination and other exotic technologies forward and, in coming years, drive up water rates. Interior Secretary Gale Norton warned of a cutback this month after the collapse of a long-term deal aimed at curbing California's overdependence on the river. But it was unclear exactly who would be affected and by how much until the Interior Department approved 2003 orders for Colorado River water Friday. Interior officials did, however, give California a way out. The state can avoid the cutback if Southern California water agencies resurrect a 75-year deal to transfer Colorado River water from desert farms to cities by Tuesday. The deal collapsed Dec. 9 when the Imperial Valley refused to sell any of its massive share of Colorado River water to coastal cities. The Metropolitan Water District, which supplies 17 million people in Southern California, including much of south Orange County, will lose enough water for more than 800,000 people in 2003. The district has said it has enough reserves to make up the shortfall for at least the next two years and, with recent rains, as much as four years. The Interior Department is also cutting back water to Imperial Valley farmers in California's southeast corner. They are losing enough water to supply 400,000 people, roughly 7 percent of the trillion gallons of water they use to grow $1 billion worth of food in the desert each year. The reduction will be achieved by holding back water behind Hoover Dam. Under water-sharing agreements that date to the Depression, farmers in the Southern California desert have had a greater claim to California's Colorado River water. But Congress made the interior secretary the "master" of the lower Colorado, endowing the office with sweeping powers to allocate water. The impending cuts will increase the pressure on water officials in the Imperial Valley. An Imperial Valley water board has scheduled a meeting for Monday, after several days of intense discussions with other Southern California water agencies aimed at reviving the deal. Norton is the first interior secretary to use her authority to ensure the seven Western states on the river get their share. The other states that draw on the river are Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, Arizona and Nevada. For years, California has used excess water from the Colorado River because other states didn't use the full amount they were entitled to under a 1929 accord. Rapid growth in the West, combined with the worst drought in the river's recorded history, has forced the Interior Department to crack down. The Imperial Valley said the deal's main flaw was that it failed to address its concerns over the Salton Sea, California's largest lake, which would quickly become too salty for fish and birds without water running off farm fields.
The Associated Press
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Nice thought, but I think I know where the problem lies.
That ag runoff would produce salts loaded with organic decomposed pesticides and metals that would qualify as "toxic waste." Remember the selenium problem in Kesterson reservoir? I'd bet the cost of disposing of the salts safely made that plan unaffordable.
It had to end up this way. You can't expect a closed inland sea in a climate like that to remain suitable for fish for very long even without ag runoff. The only solution now is to provide farmers and landowners an economic motive to provide suitable habitat by a range of means. Competitive bid might motivate development of methods to provide avian habitat while mitigating such accumulations in the future.
OK, so I get to say it again, but I do have some ideas.
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