At California’s dying Salton Sea, signs of activity and cautious optimism
By October 2017, a handful of desert residents — including two Mecca high school students — were so fed up with a dearth of government progress on efforts to save the shrinking Salton Sea that they took matters into their own hands. They tried to hand-shovel a ditch to keep water flowing from the dwindling lake into the once beautiful harbor in front of the North Shore Yacht Club. “We figured we could keep water in there for another six months at least,” said Tom Sephton, a longtime Brawley resident and local businessman, who like many is captivated by California’s largest water body.