If you know anything about the Salton Sea, maybe you’ve heard that California’s largest lake has been shrinking for decades, the fish are dying, and toxic dust from the lakebed is blowing around the Coachella Valley. The term “apocalyptic” gets thrown around. For the people who live here, that’s not a helpful way to think of the place. … Thinking of the Salton Sea as a place that’s doomed can make it hard to see it as a place in the middle of dramatic change, affected in real time by humans — and lately by the equivalent of a really big faucet. Long-running plans to add more water — more sustainable water — to the edges of the sea are now coming online, which should be great news for the region’s most devoted tourists: the birds. … As water is rerouted from the lake to San Diego and other urban areas, the Salton Sea is getting saltier. So the fish are dying off, and the fish-eating birds, like pelicans, are also going elsewhere as the place changes.