The Desert Sun Editorial Board

The Salton Sea is at the center of a relatively small, but still tragic, struggle of good versus good.

As reported recently by The Desert Sun’s Ian James, the Coachella Valley Water District is seeking permission from the state to recycle water from another of its wastewater treatment facilities in the Coachella Valley.

CVWD already recycles water from three other sewage treatment facilities, using it for purposes such as irrigating golf courses, parks and large housing developments.

Our thirsty Coachella Valley can always use more water, right? How could recycling treated sewage for use in such large-scale, water-intensive applications be bad, especially if that means it can replace the use of fresh water we humans need to drink, bathe and cook?

Here’s the rub: The treated sewage water from CVWD’s Thermal plant currently ends up in the Whitewater River channel and mixes with farm runoff on a nine-mile journey to the Salton Sea. So, repurposing the treated water will mean it won’t get to the sea, which already has been shrinking and is set to see an even faster decline starting at the end of this year when Colorado River water flows under a water-swapping deal cease.

MORE: Recycling plan draws fire

MORE: Palo Verde Valley focus of water fight

The treated wastewater amounts to a small amount of all the water flowing into California’s largest lake. Still, environmentalists insist these roughly 1.7 billion gallons of water per year – about 14 percent of the Whitewater River’s flow - play a key role at the sea’s north end and will be vital to restoration efforts there.

“There is so little water available at the north end of the Salton Sea,” Joan Taylor, local conservation chair for the Sierra Club, told The Desert Sun’s James. “(This) would directly and significantly impact the ability to construct much-needed habitat near the Whitewater River.”

CVWD has been accepting written protests about the plan and will spend the next six months reviewing them. “We will evaluate the comments that are provided to us to help understand the impacts,” CVWD spokeswoman Katie Evans old James. “We look forward to working with our stakeholders to better understand their concerns.”

We expect that everyone with an interest here – yes, that pretty much includes all of us in the region who will be affected by the sea’s collapse – is paying attention.

This small episode highlights what has become a much larger, highly complex ballet where every move is tightly connected to the other. A relatively small amount of water at one part of the sea is now clearly a vital need staving off a larger catastrophe. Truly every drop matters – even those being sought for another noble use.

Perhaps most discouraging is that this “good versus good” face-off comes as stakeholders work frantically at the 11th hour to get the state of California to meet the commitment it made under the historic 2003 water transfer deal that shifted Imperial Valley agricultural water from the Colorado River to cities in the Coachella Valley and San Diego County. Supplemental water flows to sustain the sea from Imperial Irrigation District called for under the Quantification Settlement Agreement will halt at the end of this year.

Other key, late-hour moves in this now-frantic ballet include recent action by the Legislature to authorize funding – albeit not quite enough – to finance the state’s 10-year dust mitigation and habitat restoration plan for the sea. This plan was only recently approved by the State Water Resources Control Board.

But wait, there’s more! The bulk of the funding approved by the Legislature for this plan is part of a massive water and parks bond that state voters will decide in June. For now, Sacramento has ponied up only $80.5 million of the estimated $383 million cost of the 10-year plan. In addition, the June bond, assuming it passes, earmarks $200 million for the sea, so the total called for still won’t be reached.

We’re not sure which “good” should prevail in the recycling dispute. CVWD and the other stakeholders clearly have their work cut out for them at this point figuring out how the best allocation of each drop of water.

There’s little doubt, however, that all of us would have been better off if the slow-moving, 15-years-in-the-making crisis that now exists at the Salton Sea had been seriously addressed and tackled before the clock was about to expire.