California’s largest lake is the man-made Salton Sea, a shallow, salt water lake in the middle of the southern California desert. It sits just north of the Mexican border. The Salton Sea lies in what used to be an ancient dry lake bed, only five feet higher than Death Valley. Today it is sadly vanishing back into dust. How was it created and what led to its demise?
The original Lake Cahuilla occupied the basin until about 300 years ago. It was a part of the Colorado River’s path to the Gulf of California. Silt build-up over the centuries changed the river’s course to the east, drying up the lake. The desert area was avoided by man until the early 1900s. That’s when farmers realized that, with massive irrigation from the Colorado River, the soil would produce valuable farmland. A series of long canals were built and water flowed into the dry desert. Soon, more than 10,000 workers moved into the region. The area was dubbed “Imperial Valley,” and quickly turned 100,000 acres of desert into rich farm land.
The current Salton Sea was formed completely by accident.
In the spring of 1905, heavy flood waters on the Colorado River burst through the walls of the irrigation canals in southwestern Arizona. Almost the entire Colorado River changed its route, back to its ancient path and began refilling the Salton Basin. It also inundating the path of the Southern Pacific Railroad line. Initial efforts to seal the breach failed and for 18 months, the river flooded in, filling the Salton basin like a huge bath tub.
Water continued to fill the newly named “Salton Sea” until 1907. The railroad company built a line of new levees using railcars, filled with boulders, unloaded into the breach. 2,000 workers dumped more than 3,000 railroad cars full of boulders and dirt. It worked!
But by then, a new shallow inland lake had formed. It was about 40 miles long and 15 wide, covering about 500 square miles, though only 30 feet deep on average. It all seemed unnatural, this shimmering lake surrounded by chalky sand, spiked cactus and dusty tumbleweeds.
Once the canal was repaired, the Salton Sea no longer had an intake source of fresh water. The new lake was more or less left alone. Water runoff from the Imperial Valley farms offset the heavy desert evaporation and kept the lake alive. The new sea grew to support an ecosystem that attracted hundreds of species of migratory birds. Thousands began to spend their winters there every year. The state stocked the lake with salt water fish and they flourished. By the late 1950’s, the Salton Sea was the most productive fishery in California.
In the 1950’s, developers also saw resort opportunities in California’s largest lake.
Towns like Salton City and Bombay Beach popped up along its shoreline. Resorts were built catering to tourists interested in the endless California sunshine. Water skiing, swimming, fishing, and bird watching were quite popular. Bombay Beach in particular was built as a celebrity destination. The likes of Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby and the Beach Boys frequented its new luxury resorts. At its peak in the 50’s and 60’, the Salton Sea drew 1.5 million visitors annually, more than Yosemite National Park!
However, all was not sunny in southern California. Little thought and few resources were devoted to the management of this accidental body of water. It was a terminal lake as well so the Salton Sea lacked any outflow. The agricultural runoff that sustained the lake contained not only nitrate fertilizers, but herbicides, pesticides, and high quantities of salt. All this quietly settled into the mud at the bottom of the shallow lake.
In the 1970s, scientists started warning the towns that the increasing salt would cause the Salton Sea to dry up and shrink, making it inhospitable to wildlife. Sure enough, before the decade was out, fish started dying off and the migratory birds declined. The lake began to smell of sulfur (rotten egg smell), spurring the state to issue periodic Odor Advisories. Tourism and its economy quickly began to flee to more marketable locations like Palm Springs.
As the agricultural runoff drained through the basin’s soil, it raised the salinity even further. Over the years, the salinity slowly rose enough to kill off most of the lake’s fish. By the 1980s, the salt level was about 1.5 times higher than the Pacific Ocean. As the salinity increased, all the fish, except tilapia, stopped reproducing. Tilapia was introduced into the Colorado canals to control algae growth.
In the 1990s, the lake began to recede, stranding residences and businesses far from the water’s edge.
Water-management priorities diverted more water to California’s southern cities. Scores of stinking dead fish now lined the dry shore line. In 2003, the state agreed to transfer water to San Diego County. Farmers were forced to switch from flood to drip irrigation. There was still enough for agriculture, but not the runoff needed for the Salton Sea. California was supposed to implement a plan to reduce habitat loss for migrating birds by 2018. But that plan stalled in Sacramento. The lake continued to shrink, and a new Public-Health Crisis was born.
The Salton Sea had yet another problem: Climate change was making this dry desert region even drier. The growing demand for water in the suburbs of Los Angeles and San Diego continues to reduce the amount of the Colorado River diverted to the Imperial Valley. All this increased the pace at which the Salton Sea is shrinking. More dry lake bed was exposed and along with it, the agricultural toxins trapped in the mud for decades.
Desert winds lift dust off the dry lakebed and into the sky. The toxic residue of 100 years of agricultural runoff blows into the air … and into human lungs. The Salton Sea area has some of the worst air quality in the country. Local residents of Bombay Beach have some of the highest rates of asthma and other respiratory problems in the state. Many who once relied on the lake have left, driven away by the lack of tourism, the nauseating stench of the lake, or mounting health problems.
The few who remain – farmworkers and the elderly are too poor to live elsewhere in CA.
The Imperial Valley still produces 2/3 of the country’s winter fruits and vegetables, thirsty plants like lettuce and honeydew. But farming the desert requires a heavy cost. The Imperial Irrigation District diverts 3 million acre-feet of water from the Colorado River, about half of California’s entire allotment. Ironically, Imperial County has one of the highest unemployment rates in the country. Today, 1 in 4 people there live in poverty.
Tourists at Bombay Beach are mostly snowbirds from Palm Beach. They come to see the ruins of the once-famous party town. Across the shrinking, shimmering lake, the Santa Rosa Mountains loom. The town’s population has shrunk to under 200. It is by all means a modern, living ghost town. The nearest gas station is 20 miles away. The only market is a small convenience store. The temperature reaches 110F in the summer. The town is littered with abandoned homes and trailers, covered in graffiti. Signs warn against swimming, not that anyone could, as the shore is now miles away.
A few tourists still arrive today, mainly out of curiosity. Ironically, there is a state recreation area there. They come for no more than an hour or two though, due to the poor air quality and the stench of dying fish. Businesses don’t want to come to the area for the same reasons. The smell was once described by the U.S. Geological Survey and “Noxious and Pervasive.”
Bird watching used to be very good. But with the sea at such low levels, fewer birds stop there, as there’s no food in the sea. The locals have noticed fewer birds are coming back each year. Those that don’t get enough food to continue their migration, die on the lake shore, along with the rotting fish.
The California Natural Resource Agency released a Salton Sea Restoration Plan in 2007.
The idea of the plan was to redirect the remaining inflows to small, man-made wetlands, not the lake. It would both suppress dust and recreate bird habitat. The plan lacked state funding however. Over the years, promises of money evaporated, just like the Salton Sea, as political priorities and parties shifted in the state capital. Varner Harbor is closed to fishing boats as the sea had retreated from the docks.
The lack of action led to alternative plans from various environmental groups. One proposed creating a pipeline from the Sea of Cortez, pumping in ocean water and returning the lake to its original size. Any plan however lacked funding and water rights. The nonprofit Pacific Institute estimates that without human intervention, the 350-sq. mi. lake will shrink to 100 sq. mi. by 2030. The salinity will triple over 15 years. And the remaining Tilapia will disappear and die in 5 years.
California’s Salton Sea is a hard lesson of man’s attempts to intervene once Mother Nature has set her course. Turning the desert into cities and farmland came at a high cost. Today, with a decades-long southwestern mega-drought, climate change raging, and water wars over the Colorado River, the lake continues to dry up and shrink. Currently, the stagnant lake is about twice as salty as the nearby Pacific Ocean. Care for a swim, anyone?