Salton Sea Sticking Point in Water Deal

Smelly and discolored, the Salton Sea has long been California’s environmental invalid, cursed by rising salinity and an unstoppable flow of agricultural pesticides and Mexican sewage.

Still, this contradictory and improbable body of water that straddles Imperial and Riverside counties supports an enormous population of fish and millions of migratory birds.

For decades water planners have warned that the sea--which was created by accident nearly a hundred years ago--is dying and will someday be too salty for fish to survive. Those warnings have gone largely unheeded.

Now, unless a plan is devised in a few months to protect fish and birds in the sickly sea, a water transfer that is crucial to California’s future supply may be in peril.

Nor is wildlife the only concern. Officials in downwind areas are concerned about the health hazards posed by the possibility of toxic dust storms like those that blow off Owens Lake if the Salton Sea is allowed to shrink and acres of salty, chemical-laced sea bottom become exposed to the desert winds.

The sea is suddenly center stage in California’s water planning--and politicking--because of a proposed deal for water-rich farmers in the Imperial Valley to sell water to arid San Diego County. The San Diego-Imperial Valley deal would be the largest transfer of water from agricultural to urban users in the nation’s history.

The sea is dependent on agricultural runoff for replenishment, and any reduction of water use by farmers could cause the sea to become smaller and saltier.

Federal and state endangered species laws require water agencies involved in selling and buying water to offset any negative impact caused by such sales. With people concerned about toxic dust storms, and invoking the federal Clean Air Act, the chances of litigation over the Salton Sea are considerable.

If the Imperial Valley-San Diego water deal falls apart for failure to find a solution for the Salton Sea, the effect could be felt throughout Southern California.

The water deal is key to an overall plan to reduce the state’s reliance on the Colorado River. If other states dependent on the river are not convinced that California is serious about cutting back, they could demand that the federal government reduce California’s take from the river.

“One piece falls and the whole thing fails,” said Bob Campbell, a Salton Sea specialist with the San Diego County Water Authority. “That’s the rock and the hard spot we’re between.”

The problem is that there is no consensus on how to fix the Salton Sea or how to pay for it. Worse yet, there are studies that predict that even a rescue plan costing hundreds of millions of dollars will only delay the sea’s demise from extreme salinity.

Meanwhile, a Dec. 31 deadline for addressing the sea’s environmental problems looms, and other Colorado River states are eagerly waiting to see if California can live up to its promise to reduce its draw from the Colorado--after years of taking more than its legal limit.

If the state cannot meet the December deadline, other Colorado River states could insist that the Department of the Interior prevent California from taking water that belongs to them.

Bennett Raley, assistant Interior secretary for water and science, warned in a recent speech that the federal government would have no choice but to order a mandatory cutback if California does not voluntarily reduce its dependence on the Colorado.

The other states have agreed to give California 15 more years of receiving “surplus” water but only if, among other things, the Dec. 31 deadline is met.

Raley said the overall California water plan is in danger of being “held hostage to the larger issues presented by the Salton Sea.”

In an attempt to save the water transfer deal, Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-El Cajon) introduced a bill that would have lifted the Dec. 31 deadline, provided $60 million for save-the-sea programs, and limited the ability of environmentalists to file lawsuits claiming the water transfer would harm the sea’s wildlife.

The water agencies involved in the deal, including the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which serves 16 million people in six counties, endorsed the Hunter bill.

But it was soon bottled up in committee, amid opposition from environmentalists, Democrats and Rep. Mary Bono (R-Palm Springs), who represents the sea’s northern edge.

“There are many people who believe it’s not going to be feasible to save the sea,” said MWD Chief Executive Ronald Gastelum. “But until a document [like a Bureau of Reclamation study] or a decision point forces people to come to terms with those realities, we’re just going to swim in the same very salty water.”

Said Joseph Sax, a former advisor to the Interior Department under President Clinton and a law professor at UC Berkeley: “The problem of the Salton Sea has turned out to be far greater than anybody thought.”

As he walked along the water’s edge, crunching the tiny fish bones and barnacles that line the shore like a bathtub ring, Tom Kirk, executive director of the Salton Sea Authority, expressed his ambivalence toward this freakish body of water that he is determined to save.

“It’s a difficult place to love at first,” Kirk said. “It’s an irony inside a paradox, all wrapped up in a conundrum.”

It is also a place that was never supposed to be. For centuries it was just a salt sink, left from a prehistoric lake.

Then in 1905 the Colorado River jumped its banks near Yuma, Ariz.--the product of an ill-conceived attempt at taming the river for desert agriculture--and flowed northward for nearly two years.

Because the sink is below sea level, the river’s flow reestablished the sea. With the flow ended, the sea’s only replenishment is from three streams with contamination problems: the Alamo and Whitewater rivers, which carry pesticides from agricultural spraying, and the infamous New River, carrying untreated sewage and other pollutants from Mexicali, Mexico.

For any other body of water, stopping or reducing flows from rivers like those would be a boon. For the Salton Sea, it could be the death knell.

As troublesome as agricultural runoff is as a source of replenishment, it is better than no runoff at all. Without replenishment, the sea would shrivel and the salt level would skyrocket, killing the fish and scaring away the birds.

Because the sea depends on agricultural runoff, its size has fluctuated with annual changes in the level of planting and irrigation. The shifting level has led to flooding of waterfront businesses, bankruptcies and lawsuits.

The sea is ringed with motels, marinas, grocery stores, and condominium projects that went bust waiting for the area to regain the popularity it enjoyed before the state began warning about health dangers linked to eating fish from the water.

The Salton Sea may be the only place in California where waterfront property is declining in value. A local joke holds that someone who sells property at only a 10% loss after 10 years is considered to have made a profit.

The salinity level has led to a profusion of algae--which gives the sea its distinctive brown color and rotten-egg smell--and occasional massive die-offs of fish. There have also been die-offs of birds. So far, scientists haven’t been able to agree on the cause.

The sea is 35 miles long, 15 miles wide and up to 50 feet deep. It is 25% saltier than the Pacific Ocean. Fishing is good year round. Water-skiers love the glassy surface, and winter visitors enjoy baking in the desert sun and gazing at the Chocolate and Santa Rosa mountains in the background.

One estimate is that the Imperial Valley-San Diego deal--because it will mean less water used on crops and thus less runoff--will shrink the sea’s “footprint” by a third.

“We’re looking at a smaller and stinkier sea,” Kirk said.

David Hogan, a biologist with the Center for Biological Diversity, based in Tucson and Idyllwild, accused federal environmental agencies of “abdicating their responsibility to protect our environment” by not blocking the water deal. “They got rolled,” he said.

The Salton Sea Authority--run jointly by Riverside and Imperial counties, the Imperial Irrigation District and the Coachella Valley Water District--has stopped short of opposing the water deal but has warned repeatedly about air pollution and fish depletion.

For residents of an area already suffering from some of the state’s dirtiest air, the specter of dust storms from a newly exposed Salton Sea bottom is infuriating.

Rep. Bono has protested that water officials seem willing to sacrifice the health of the nearby Coachella Valley to ensure that the water deal is approved. She and others worry that the Salton Sea could produce the kind of dust storms linked to the shrunken Owens Lake in the eastern Sierra.

“If the Salton Sea were in the frontyards of Los Angeles, San Diego and Orange counties, the current [San Diego-Imperial] proposal would be off the table,” said Palm Desert Councilman Buford Crites.

Although there is no consensus about the Salton Sea, there is no lack of activity. Reports and recommendations are being prepared by the Salton Sea Authority and the Bureau of Reclamation. Bono hopes to organize a Salton Sea task force in Congress.

“My fear is that we don’t have time [before the Dec. 31 deadline],” Bono said.

“It’s frustrating that we’re going to be playing catch-up, but it’s the best we can do.”

Officials of the Imperial Irrigation District, which is entitled to 75% of California’s share of the Colorado River, are concerned that environmentalists and politicians will try to force the district into paying most of the cost of protecting the Salton Sea.

There is even talk among farmers and others of scuttling the San Diego deal, which would scramble years of California water planning.

“The way the [deal] looks now, I can’t support it,” said Stella Mendoza, president of the district’s board of directors. “I can’t see ruining the economic health of Imperial Valley so we can send water to the coast.”