Ian James

The Desert Sun

On the bottom of what used to be a shallow bay, bulldozers and excavators are clawing into the dry lakebed.

Over the past decade, the shore of the Salton Sea has receded more than a mile at Red Hill Bay, leaving a dusty plain of salt-laden soil that crunches and crumbles underfoot.

Workers have been using machines to dig down to a clay layer, starting to build berms so the area can be flooded and transformed into more than 500 acres of wetlands. The project, which involves the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Imperial Irrigation District, is one of several initial efforts underway to restore habitat and reduce windblown dust as the Salton Sea shrinks.

The lake is about to begin receding rapidly. Under a deal that transfers increasing amounts of water to San Diego County and the Coachella Valley, the amounts flowing into the sea will be cut sharply in 2018, accelerating its decline.

State officials committed more than a decade ago to take charge of efforts to address the impacts of the water transfer at the Salton Sea. After years of delays, state officials are now working on a plan and have budgeted more than $80 million to start building canals and wetlands along portions of the shore. The federal government has also stepped in, announcing $30 million this year to support projects at the sea.

All of the money committed so far, though, will be minuscule compared to the colossal changes that are about to unfold at California’s largest lake, which over the next 15 years is set to shrink dramatically. The Salton Sea’s ecosystem, sustained for more than a century by Colorado River water running off farmland, is also in danger of collapsing as rising salinity threatens to wipe out the fish that have made the lake a critical stop-off point for migrating birds.

The state has budgeted enough money so far to construct wetlands and carry out other dust control projects on an estimated 1,000-2,500 acres of dry shoreline in the next five years. Combined with the 500 acres at Red Hill Bay and an additional 640 acres of wetlands slated for construction on the south shore, those existing projects will be enough to cover up, at most, about 3,600 acres of dry lake bottom by 2021.

During that same timeframe, the Salton Sea is projected to recede so much that approximately 30,000 acres of lakebed could be left exposed. A decade later, by 2032, the acreage of bare “playa” around the sea is projected to grow to 65,000 acres, or more than 100 square miles. Those enormous stretches of lakebed, if left exposed to the winds, would send more dust wafting into the air and pose serious health hazards for people across the Imperial and Coachella valleys.

“The rate of decline at the Salton Sea is drastically outpacing the rate of habitat and dust control construction,” said Michael Cohen, a researcher with the Pacific Institute, an Oakland-based think tank. “There is a real disconnect.”

Two years ago, the Pacific Institute issued a report warning that without significant steps to address the sea’s problems, Californians could face between $29 billion and $70 billion in costs, ranging from lower property values to higher health care costs for respiratory illnesses.

Cohen credited state and federal officials with making considerable progress during the past year by setting goals for building marshes and approving some money.

“In the short term, if they really started getting some projects on the ground soon, I’d feel more comfortable,” Cohen said. But what’s also missing, he added, is a larger vision and a clear plan of action including projects that have been fully vetted.

“We’re not sure at this point what the long-term plan is going to be,” Cohen said, “and more importantly, how they’re going to fund it.”

Gov. Jerry Brown last year appointed Bruce Wilcox to lead the state’s efforts at the Salton Sea. Wilcox has been working with a committee to develop a long-range plan.

Wilcox said a draft of the plan, which should be ready by early January, will list projects for the next decade and beyond, including building thousands of acres of additional wetlands as well as a “perimeter lake” that would run parallel to the shoreline around much of the lake. He expects the cost will end up being between $2 billion and $2.5 billion, and the plan will lay out a “pipeline of projects” that can be built as money becomes available.

Wilcox acknowledged a large gap in funding and said officials are working on lining up additional sources of funds. In the meantime, they’re starting on design work for an “infrastructure backbone” of canals that will carry water to wetlands along the shore.

“Right now,” Wilcox said, “we’re focused on building things with the funding we have.”

During a September committee meeting in Palm Desert, Cohen questioned the state’s methods for deciding on areas to build wetlands. He remarked to the other committee members: “It seems like we should be thinking bigger.”

Wilcox replied: “We’re just trying to get something built now as fast as we can.”

On a recent afternoon in Salton City, about a dozen people filed into the cafeteria of West Shores High School for a talk on the Salton Sea.

Wilcox stood at the front of the room beneath cartoonish images of a wildcat, the school mascot, and explained the lake’s decline, its rising salinity, and the state’s plans for projects to control dust and create habitat. Some of the questions posed by the audience focused on the threat of toxic dust in an area that already has high asthma rates.

“What do you think is going to be the result of dust mitigation?” one man asked Wilcox. “What are your own personal feelings?”

Wilcox told him that building wetlands will be very effective in keeping the dust down.

“Now, we can’t build all the habitat," he said. "We don’t have enough money.”

Wilcox added that many parts of the lakebed will probably give off dust, but others may not.

“You are never going to completely stop dust emissions from the Salton Sea or from the desert around it – unless it’s wet, but you can’t wet the entire desert,” Wilcox said.

The fine dust on the exposed lakebed is laden with salt. Researchers have also found heavy metals such as selenium and mercury, and pesticides such as DDT in the lake and its tributaries. Wilcox said additional research could help pin down the levels of toxic contaminants in the dust and areas where the dust may be most hazardous.

Speaking to the group at the high school, Wilcox praised several pilot projects now being tested by the Imperial Irrigation District, saying they’ve proven successful in controlling dust.

Jessica Lovecchio, who has been heading up those projects, explained how the district has used a tractor and a plow to roughen the surface of 300 acres of lakebed. The deep furrows carved by the plow, she explained, act like a “speed bump” for the wind and help keep down dust.

Tilling the lakebed, she said, can be a temporary measure while longer term fixes are being put in place. Her team has also been experimenting with salt-tolerant plants that could take root along the shoreline, and has tried aerial spraying of chemicals that coat the soil and keep down dust.

“We’re trying to get ahead of the problem,” Lovecchio said, “and get these dust mitigation programs out on the playa now.”

THE CURRENT: Sign up for The Desert Sun’s energy and water newsletter

Marisa Castillo, who lives part-time in Salton City and attended the meeting, said afterward that she’s concerned about the lack of progress on government projects at the lake.

“I think that they are doing too little, too late. The government agencies need to have a stronger presence in the area to increase community awareness and participation,” Castillo said.

“My biggest concern is that when they finally do something,” she said, it will be to remediate problems “that now are in a preventable stage.”

Imperial County officials in August took the unusual step of issuing a notice inviting landowners with property near the Salton Sea to apply to “present test projects” to control dust on their land. It’s unclear how much of a response the county may receive.

It’s also not yet clear how much it may cost government agencies to deal with dust around the Salton Sea. But another body of water, the mostly dry Owens Lake, provides a comparable example.

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, which caused the lake’s decline by diverting water, has spent $1.8 billion at Owens Lake, primarily to control dust. And because the Salton Sea is much larger than Owens Lake, the task of controlling dust around it will be bigger – and probably more expensive.

Over millennia, the depression in the desert known as the Salton Sink has at times been dry and at others has been a lake filled with water from the Colorado River.

The sea was accidentally created in its current form between 1905 and 1907, when Colorado River water broke through irrigation canals in the Imperial Valley and flooded into the basin. Since then, the lake has been sustained largely by runoff from the Imperial Valley’s farms, which produce hay, wheat and vegetables like carrots and Brussels sprouts.

The lake level has gone up and down over the years, and in 1995 reached a high point. Since then, the sea been declining as the amounts of water flowing in have decreased and as evaporation has taken its toll. The sea’s surface now sits at 235 feet below sea level.

Over the next 15 years, the water level is set to plunge. Projections vary widely as to how quickly the water will recede. By some estimates, the lake level could drop by more than 10 feet – or by nearly 20 feet – by 2030.

Because the lake is shallow, that decline will leave large areas of the bottom dry.

The Salton Sea is being reshaped by growing strains on supplies of water from the Colorado River. Under the landmark 2003 water transfer deal known as the Quantification Settlement Agreement, the Imperial Irrigation District – which holds the largest single entitlement to water from the Colorado River – is selling increasing amounts of water to the Coachella Valley Water District and the San Diego County Water Authority.

The deal called for the Imperial district to deliver flows of “mitigation water” to the sea during the first 15 years, a period that was intended to give state officials time to prepare plans for dealing with the effects at the Salton Sea. The water is generated through a program in which the Imperial Irrigation District pays farmers to leave portions of their land fallow.

During 2017, the district plans to make its final deliveries of mitigation water to the lake totaling 105,000 acre-feet, or 34 billion gallons. Then those deliveries will cease and the sea’s decline will accelerate.

READ MORE: Tracking asthma threats in the Imperial Valley's hazy air

With that drop-off looming, there has been a flurry of activity by state and federal officials during the past year.

In a newly signed memorandum of understanding, the federal government committed to spending $30 million at the Salton Sea and pledged to work with the state to speed up projects to protect public health and the environment.

During a summit at Lake Tahoe on Aug. 31, President Obama weighed in, saying: "We’re going to reverse the deterioration of the Salton Sea before it is too late.”

That federal support, if it continues under the next administration, could help California officials move forward with the goals of the state’s Salton Sea Management Program, which include a “medium-term” target of constructing 18,000-25,000 acres of wetlands and dust control projects.

Riverside County is also preparing a plan to generate more funds for Salton Sea projects by creating a new infrastructure financing district that would draw on tax revenues in communities along the lake’s north shore.

Other ideas for generating dollars to support Salton Sea projects have included promoting development of more geothermal energy plants along the lake’s south shore.

While funding remains one of the biggest unanswered questions, some philanthropic organizations seem ready to pitch in. The Water Funder Initiative, a nonprofit backed by several foundations, has announced a goal of contributing $10 million to a comprehensive plan.

At the Red Hill Bay wetlands project, volunteers with the disaster response organization Team Rubicon have been operating donated bulldozers and excavators. The organization’s volunteers are largely military veterans.

Volunteer Jim Simmons, a Vietnam War veteran from Grand Haven, Michigan, was scooping out soil with an excavator earlier this month, wearing a hardhat and earplugs. He said he volunteered to log training hours for his heavy equipment operator certification, which will enable him to help in disasters such as hurricanes and floods.

Standing next to the rumbling machine, he said it’s his first visit to the Salton Sea, and he’s pleased to be helping restore habitat for birds.

He looking out over the dry plain, where several dead trees protruded from the soil.

“Every place has its own beauty,” he said, “and the Salton Sea certainly has its beauty.”

With the sea already short on water, negotiations are now underway on a “drought contingency plan” under which California, Nevada and Arizona would take less water from the Colorado River to avert a more severe shortage. If that plan is ultimately approved by the three states and local water districts, the agreement would translate into less water reaching the Salton Sea.

Looking for other sources of water, some people have touted proposals to pipe in seawater to sustain the lake. The idea of importing seawater recently came up in an election debate between incumbent Chad Mayes and challenger Greg Rodriguez in the race for the 42nd Assembly District seat.

Rodriguez said he supports building a pipeline from the Sea of Cortez to the Salton Sea. Mayes asked where the money would come from for such a plan.

READ MORE: A Salton Sea geothermal company thinks it's solved the lithium puzzle

Wilcox said the state’s long-range plan will outline an evaluation process for considering ideas that involve importing water in the future.

“The biggest thing that would need to be done is some kind of environmental, engineering and economic analysis on the costs. That would be the first step,” Wilcox said. “I know the state isn’t right now going to fund that, and I don’t know that the state would fund it longer term.”

Though state officials aren’t ruling out the possibility of importing water, Wilcox said, "it seems to us right now that it makes more sense to plan for a smaller but sustainable sea."

Part of the “smaller-but-sustainable” concept that will be outlined in the state’s upcoming plan involves the proposed “perimeter lake,” which would wrap around the receding inner sea, stretching more than 60 miles.

That strip of water, as narrow as 550 feet and as wide as 3 miles, would be fed by a mix of water from Whitewater River, the New River and the Salton Sea.

The lower salinity would make the waterway suitable habitat for fish and birds, Wilcox said, and the project would reduce blowing dust by covering up 36 square miles of dry lakebed.

On the lake’s north shore, Tim Bradley gathered his research gear from his car and slipped on his waders. Stepping into the water, he waded out into the lake and began stooping down to collect water samples.

Bradley, an ecology professor and director of the Salton Sea Initiative at the University of California, Irvine, is studying the rate of photosynthesis in the algae in the water. The study will measure the energy flowing through the base of the food chain and gather baseline data about the ecosystem.

As the salinity continues to rise, he said, the remaining tilapia are expected to disappear and the ecosystem will transition to become more like Mono Lake or the Great Salt Lake, which support different species of birds.

While Bradley’s focus is on science, he also recently took a policy position and suggested to state officials that they should take a hard look at the pace of the water transfers given the looming dust problems.

“That shrinkage of the sea is going to cause dried beaches, and dust will come off these beaches – toxic dust that contains chemicals and heavy metals,” Bradley said. “The state has a plan to cover these beaches with marshes and with other types of dust mitigation techniques to keep the dust down, but the state is way behind. I mean, the state has dallied for 13 years.”

With the water transfer kicking in soon, Bradley said, he has proposed to the State Water Resources Control Board that “they regulate the rate at which water is removed so that the state is able to protect the health of the people in the valley.”

If the dry lakebed is exposed faster than the state can cover it up, he said, the toxic dust will cause even higher rates of asthma and other respiratory diseases.

"Right now we’re putting the health of hundreds of thousands of inhabitants of this area at risk in the belief that the state will do the mitigation at a sufficient rate," Bradley said. "And I think that’s a risk that we should not be taking."

Might it be possible to slow down or push back the water transfers at the 11th hour?

Wilcox says that idea is nowhere near as simple as it sounds – in part because changing the agreement would be difficult and because money would be needed to pay for additional water to put into the sea.

Wilcox and the Brown administration are banking instead on the idea that they will make the biggest impact by starting to build wetlands, even though they’re years behind in getting started.

Ian James can be reached at ian.james@desertsun.com or @TDSIanJames.