Southern California’s Salton Sea—approximately 232 feet (70 m)
below sea level— is one of the world’s largest inland seas. It
has 130 miles of shoreline and is larger than Lake Tahoe.
The sea was created in 1905 when the Colorado River broke through
a series of dikes, flooding a salty basin known as the Salton
Sink in the Imperial Valley. The sea is an important stopping
point for 1 million migratory waterfowl, and serves as critical
habitat for birds moving south to Mexico and Central America.
Overall, the Salton Sea harbors more than 270 species of birds
including ducks, geese, cormorants and pelicans.
Researchers at the United States Geological Survey and the
Arkansas government announced on Monday that they had found a
trove of lithium, a critical raw material for electric vehicle
batteries, in an underground brine reservoir in Arkansas. With
the help of water testing and machine learning, the researchers
determined that there might be five million to 19 million tons
of lithium — more than enough to meet all of the world’s demand
for the metal — in a geological area known as the Smackover
Formation. … Federal researchers also have identified other
potential resources that could produce large quantities of
lithium, including the Salton Sea in Southern
California, where Berkshire Hathaway Energy and other
companies are working to extract lithium from hot liquid pumped
up from an aquifer more than 4,000 feet below the ground by
geothermal power plants.
The developer of the nationally lauded but controversial Hell’s
Kitchen geothermal and lithium extraction project near the
Salton Sea illegally drained 1,200 acres of fragile wetlands by
dumping dredged fill nearby, according to a settlement
agreement announced on Thursday by the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency. The work was performed on leased Imperial
Irrigation District land as part of Controlled Thermal
Resources’ Hells Kitchen pilot project west of Niland — on hold
due to an unrelated lawsuit — which aims to produce 49.9
megawatts of steam power and 20,000 tons of lithium annually.
The project is the first stage of much larger planned
production of the mineral, which is used in everything from
commercial solar projects to to smart phones.
California and Biden administration officials on Tuesday
announced new ecosystem restoration plans for the dwindling
Salton Sea, where conservation efforts aim to improve regional
air quality and support wildlife. … As the restoration
project proceeds, state officials said that they aim to revive
the region’s ecological value by creating networks of ponds and
wetlands, providing habitats for fish and birds and suppressing
dust within the area. The Salton Sea is one of many salty lakes
around the world that has been stirring up dust and worsening
air pollution as it dries up.
A California lawmaker says Imperial County officials need to
rework their controversial lithium spending plan, or they could
face state intervention. In an interview with KPBS,
Assemblymember Eduardo Garcia (D-Coachella) said the county was
required by state law to direct significantly more lithium tax
dollars to towns on the north end of the valley. He said the
current spending plan does not comply with those terms. … The
dispute between state and county officials goes back to
a 2022 state law that placed a new lithium tax on
companies hoping to extract the valuable mineral — a key
component in electric cars and other battery technology — in
California.
… The area where [Samantha Arthur] stands was underwater
three years ago. More polluted shoreline is exposed every day.
But behind her, areas planted with salt brush and other native
bushes and grasses painted an autumn palette of dun brown,
silvery gray and light green. Dust emissions along select edges
of the rapidly dwindling lake — about 1,320 acres in the Tule
Wash area near Salton City — have now been slashed by 90%,
according to Arthur, deputy water secretary for the state
natural resources agency, and other elated officials.
They’re tracking data from nearly two dozen gawky looking,
instrument-laden monitors placed both downwind and upwind of
the aggressive straw bale and native planting program along the
western shoreline. Now that they’ve figured out what works,
officials say they can replicate the efforts again and
again. … But a coalition of researchers and
environmental justice groups charged last week that those
measures and more rudimentary ones by the Imperial Irrigation
District are too little, too late, and will be “obsolete”
before they are finally completed.
In 2022, when California lawmakers approved a new tax on
lithium — a key component in electric cars and other battery
technology — residents across Imperial County were thrilled. To
many, the tax was a straightforward promise: If companies were
able to successfully extract the valuable mineral somewhere
within the state’s borders, nearby towns and cities would also
get a share of the profits. In Imperial County, where cautious
excitement over vast lithium deposits under the Salton Sea had
been bubbling for several years, that meant poorer communities
like Niland and Calipatria might finally see more funding to
repair aging roads, parks and other services. But two years
into the rollout of that tax, those hopes have also become
tinged with worry. That’s because last month, the Imperial
County Board of Supervisors unanimously approved a
controversial plan for splitting up those funds.
Monday marked the end of the Imperial Irrigation District’s
49-day Deficit Irrigation Program. Since the Imperial
Irrigation District approved and implemented this
additional water conservation program – expected to yield
170,000 acre-feet of water this year (and as much as
500,000 AF over the next two years) – the Salton Sea’s rate of
decline increased 50% relative to the recent average rate,
exposing thousands of additional acres of lakebed, Pacific
Institute and Alianza Coachella Valley said in a joint press
release. … Since August 12, 2024, the surface elevation
of the Salton Sea has fallen by about 10 inches and the Sea has
shrunk by about 3,500 acres, exposing even more dust-emitting
playa, degrading the health of the surrounding communities.
One of the nation’s oldest environmental groups is suing
Imperial County’s powerful water agency over a recent deal
meant to help conserve the parched Colorado River. Under the
terms of the deal, the Imperial Irrigation District, or IID,
will try to cut back its consumption of Colorado River water by
750,000 acre feet over the next three years. In return, the
agency and farmers who conserve water could receive more than
$600 million from the federal Bureau of Reclamation. But those
cutbacks will also reduce the amount of water flowing into the
Salton Sea, which is slowly drying up. That could accelerate
the release of harmful particles into the air from the exposed
lakebed, according to the Bureau of Reclamation’s own
environmental assessment of the deal. That’s led the Sierra
Club to challenge the deal, arguing it violates state law and
puts residents along the Salton Sea in greater danger of
breathing in toxic, chemical-laden dust. … The group also
alleges that IID didn’t account for the impact on desert
wildlife.
A few days before the Sept. 30 deadline, Calif. Gov. Gavin
Newsom announced Wednesday the signing of dozens of bills and
the veto of several others, including AB 2757 authored by
outgoing Assemblymember Eduardo Garcia (D-Coachella). The bill,
coauthored by state Senator Steve Padilla (D-Chula Vista)
sought to designate all of Imperial County and parts of
Riverside County adjacent to the Salton Sea as
the Southeast California Economic Region, or SECER, to better
align state and federal programs, services, and funding within
those communities most impacted by the extraction and
processing of lithium and other minerals from the Salton Sea
and additional clean energy development in the surrounding
areas within the region.
… [The] Salton Sea, the state’s biggest and most toxic lake,
is an environmental disaster. And the region’s politics have
been dominated by a conservative white elite, despite its
supermajority Latino population. The county also happens to be
sitting on enough lithium to produce nearly 400 million
batteries, sufficient to completely revamp the American auto
fleet to electric propulsion. Even better, that lithium could
be extracted in a way consistent with broader goals to reduce
pollution. The traditional ways to extract lithium involve
either hard rock mining, which generates lots of waste, or
large evaporation ponds, which waste a lot of water. In
Imperial Valley, companies are pioneering a third method. They
are extracting the mineral from the underground briny water
brought up during geothermal energy production and then
injecting that briny water back into the ground in a closed
loop. It promises to yield the cleanest, greenest lithium on
the planet.
After trudging through slippery muck to the edge of
California’s vast, dwindling Salton Sea last summer, wildlife
biologists were astounded by what they and fellow surveyors
found: A quarter-million birds were ultimately tallied,
feasting along what was supposed to be a much mourned near-dead
zone on the 4,000-mile-long Pacific flyway. … Snowy plovers
that had flown in from the region’s Pacific Coast were joined
by dense flocks of western and least sandpipers, newly arrived
from far-flung Arctic breeding grounds. It was more than double
the previous one-day shore bird count record in the 1990s,
before the Salton Sea’s woes accelerated, and came just four
years after biologists had despairingly concluded bird life had
largely been wiped out at California’s largest, often ignored
water body.
… While studies of dust’s impact are ongoing, the question
researchers have been wrestling with for three decades is what
to do about it. First they must identify where the dust
originates and what’s in it. The bulk of this research
has been done as part of multi-pronged efforts to mitigate dust
storms caused by the loss of Owens Lake. For decades, storms of
fine dust gave this area the worst air quality in the nation.
After its water was sent by aqueduct to Los Angeles starting in
1913, the region was transformed into desiccated saline land
pummeled by dust storms containing nickel, cadmium and arsenic.
The Owens Valley story was a harbinger of what would happen
around the Great Basin, where there are 19 other terminal
lakes, disappearing or gone, ranging from Utah’s Great Salt
Lake to the Salton Sea to California’s Mono Lake to the Carson
Sink in Nevada and the small lakes of Oregon – Lake Abert,
Malheur Lake and Summer Lake – to Utah’s mostly dry Lake
Sevier.
Learn the history and challenges facing the West’s most dramatic
and developed river.
The Layperson’s Guide to the Colorado River Basin introduces the
1,450-mile river that sustains 40 million people and millions of
acres of farmland spanning seven states and parts of northern
Mexico.
The 28-page primer explains how the river’s water is shared and
managed as the Southwest transitions to a hotter and drier
climate.
This tour explored the lower Colorado River firsthand where virtually every drop of the river is allocated, yet demand is growing from myriad sources — increasing population, declining habitat, drought and climate change.
The 1,450-mile river is a lifeline to some 40 million people in the Southwest across seven states, 30 tribal nations and Mexico. How the Lower Basin states – Arizona, California and Nevada – use and manage this water to meet agricultural, urban, environmental and industrial needs was the focus of this tour.
Hilton Garden Inn Las Vegas Strip South
7830 S Las Vegas Blvd
Las Vegas, NV 89123
This special Foundation water tour journeyed along the Eastern Sierra from the Truckee River to Mono Lake, through the Owens Valley and into the Mojave Desert to explore a major source of water for Southern California, this year’s snowpack and challenges for towns, farms and the environment.
This tour explored the lower Colorado River firsthand where virtually every drop of the river is allocated, yet demand is growing from myriad sources — increasing population, declining habitat, drought and climate change.
The 1,450-mile river is a lifeline to some 40 million people in the Southwest across seven states, 30 tribal nations and Mexico. How the Lower Basin states – Arizona, California and Nevada – use and manage this water to meet agricultural, urban, environmental and industrial needs was the focus of this tour.
Hyatt Place Las Vegas At Silverton Village
8380 Dean Martin Drive
Las Vegas, NV 89139
The lower Colorado River has virtually every drop allocated, yet demand is growing from myriad sources — increasing population, declining habitat, drought and climate change.
The 1,450-mile river is a lifeline to 40 million people in the Southwest across seven states, 30 tribal nations and Mexico. How the Lower Basin states – Arizona, California and Nevada – use and manage this water to meet agricultural, urban, environmental and industrial needs was the focus of this tour.
Hyatt Place Las Vegas At Silverton Village
8380 Dean Martin Drive
Las Vegas, NV 89139
For more than 20 years, Tanya
Trujillo has been immersed in the many challenges of the Colorado
River, the drought-stressed lifeline for 40 million people from
Denver to Los Angeles and the source of irrigation water for more
than 5 million acres of winter lettuce, supermarket melons and
other crops.
Trujillo has experience working in both the Upper and Lower
Basins of the Colorado River, basins that split the river’s water
evenly but are sometimes at odds with each other. She was a
lawyer for the state of New Mexico, one of four states in the
Upper Colorado River Basin, when key operating guidelines for
sharing shortages on the river were negotiated in 2007. She later
worked as executive director for the Colorado River Board of
California, exposing her to the different perspectives and
challenges facing California and the other states in the river’s
Lower Basin.
State work to improve wildlife habitat and tamp down dust at California’s ailing Salton Sea is finally moving forward. Now the sea may be on the verge of getting the vital ingredient needed to supercharge those restoration efforts – money.
The shrinking desert lake has long been a trouble spot beset by rising salinity and unhealthy, lung-irritating dust blowing from its increasingly exposed bed. It shadows discussions of how to address the Colorado River’s two-decade-long drought because of its connection to the system. The lake is a festering health hazard to nearby residents, many of them impoverished, who struggle with elevated asthma risk as dust rises from the sea’s receding shoreline.
Out of sight and out of mind to most
people, the Salton Sea in California’s far southeast corner has
challenged policymakers and local agencies alike to save the
desert lake from becoming a fetid, hyper-saline water body
inhospitable to wildlife and surrounded by clouds of choking
dust.
The sea’s problems stretch beyond its boundaries in Imperial and
Riverside counties and threaten to undermine multistate
management of the Colorado River. A 2019 Drought Contingency Plan for the
Lower Colorado River Basin was briefly stalled when the Imperial
Irrigation District, holding the river’s largest water
allocation, balked at participating in the plan because, the
district said, it ignored the problems of the Salton Sea.
This event explored the lower Colorado River where virtually every drop of the river is allocated, yet demand is growing from myriad sources — increasing population, declining habitat, drought and climate change.
The 1,450-mile river is a lifeline to 40 million people in the Southwest across seven states and Mexico. How the Lower Basin states – Arizona, California and Nevada – use and manage this water to meet agricultural, urban, environmental and industrial needs was the focus of this tour.
Even as stakeholders in the Colorado River Basin celebrate the recent completion of an unprecedented drought plan intended to stave off a crashing Lake Mead, there is little time to rest. An even larger hurdle lies ahead as they prepare to hammer out the next set of rules that could vastly reshape the river’s future.
Set to expire in 2026, the current guidelines for water deliveries and shortage sharing, launched in 2007 amid a multiyear drought, were designed to prevent disputes that could provoke conflict.
One of California Gov. Gavin
Newsom’s first actions after taking office was to appoint Wade
Crowfoot as Natural Resources Agency secretary. Then, within
weeks, the governor laid out an ambitious water agenda that
Crowfoot, 45, is now charged with executing.
That agenda includes the governor’s desire for a “fresh approach”
on water, scaling back the conveyance plan in the Sacramento-San
Joaquin Delta and calling for more water recycling, expanded
floodplains in the Central Valley and more groundwater recharge.
For the bulk of her career, Jayne
Harkins has devoted her energy to issues associated with the
management of the Colorado River, both with the U.S. Bureau of
Reclamation and with the Colorado River Commission of Nevada.
Now her career is taking a different direction. Harkins, 58, was
appointed by President Trump last August to take the helm of the
United States section of the U.S.-Mexico agency that oversees
myriad water matters between the two countries as they seek to
sustainably manage the supply and water quality of the Colorado
River, including its once-thriving Delta in Mexico, and other
rivers the two countries share. She is the first woman to be
named the U.S. Commissioner of the International Boundary and
Water Commission for either the United States or Mexico in the
commission’s 129-year history.
This tour explored the lower Colorado River where virtually every drop of the river is allocated, yet demand is growing from myriad sources — increasing population, declining habitat, drought and climate change.
The 1,450-mile river is a lifeline to 40 million people in the Southwest across seven states and Mexico. How the Lower Basin states – Arizona, California and Nevada – use and manage this water to meet agricultural, urban, environmental and industrial needs is the focus of this tour.
Silverton Hotel
3333 Blue Diamond Road
Las Vegas, NV 89139
There’s going to be a new governor
in California next year – and a host of challenges both old and
new involving the state’s most vital natural resource, water.
So what should be the next governor’s water priorities?
That was one of the questions put to more than 150 participants
during a wrap-up session at the end of the Water Education
Foundation’s Sept. 20 Water Summit in Sacramento.
We explored the lower Colorado River where virtually every drop
of the river is allocated, yet demand is growing from myriad
sources — increasing population, declining habitat, drought and
climate change.
The 1,450-mile river is a lifeline to 40 million people in
the Southwest across seven states and Mexico. How the Lower Basin
states – Arizona, California and Nevada – use and manage this
water to meet agricultural, urban, environmental and industrial
needs was the focus of this tour.
Hampton Inn Tropicana
4975 Dean Martin Drive, Las Vegas, NV 89118
California voters may experience a sense of déjà vu this year when they are asked twice in the same year to consider water bonds — one in June, the other headed to the November ballot.
Both tackle a variety of water issues, from helping disadvantaged communities get clean drinking water to making flood management improvements. But they avoid more controversial proposals, such as new surface storage, and they propose to do some very different things to appeal to different constituencies.
Tickets are now on sale for the Water Education Foundation’s April 11-13 tour of the Lower Colorado River.
Don’t miss this opportunity to visit key sites along one of the nation’s most famous rivers, including a private tour of Hoover Dam, Central Arizona Project’s Mark Wilmer pumping plant and the Havasu National Wildlife Refuge. The tour also visits the Salton Sea, Slab City, the All-American Canal and farming regions in the Imperial and Coachella valleys.
This issue of Western Water discusses the challenges
facing the Colorado River Basin resulting from persistent
drought, climate change and an overallocated river, and how water
managers and others are trying to face the future.
This three-day, two-night tour explored the lower Colorado River
where virtually every drop of the river is allocated, yet demand
is growing from myriad sources — increasing population,
declining habitat, drought and climate change.
The 1,450-mile river is a lifeline to 40 million people in
the Southwest across seven states and Mexico. How the Lower Basin
states – Arizona, California and Nevada – use and manage this
water to meet agricultural, urban, environmental and industrial
needs is the focus of this tour.
Best Western McCarran Inn
4970 Paradise Road
Las Vegas, NV 89119
Scientifically and legislatively, lakes are indistinguishable
from
ponds, but lakes generally are considered to be longer and
deeper lentic, or still, waters. In the 18th and
19th centuries, scientists attempted to distinguish
the two more formally, stating that ponds were shallow enough to
allow sunlight to penetrate to the bottom, but this exists
today as an unofficial point.
Fearing an imminent public health threat, the director of the
University of California, Irvine’s Salton Sea Initiative said the
State Water Resources Control Board should step in and regulate
the rate of water transferred from the Imperial Valley to coastal
California as part of the Quantification Settlement Agreement.
The shallow, briny inland lake at the southeastern edge of
California is slowly evaporating and becoming more saline –
threatening the habitat for fish and birds and worsening air
quality as dust from the dry lakebed is whipped by the constant
winds.
(Read this excerpt from the May/June 2015 issue along with
the editor’s note. Click here to
subscribe to Western Water and get full access.)
This 25-minute documentary-style DVD, developed in partnership
with the California Department of Water Resources, provides an
excellent overview of climate change and how it is already
affecting California. The DVD also explains what scientists
anticipate in the future related to sea level rise and
precipitation/runoff changes and explores the efforts that are
underway to plan and adapt to climate.
A new look for our most popular product! And it’s the perfect
gift for the water wonk in your life.
Our 24×36-inch California Water Map is widely known for being the
definitive poster that shows the integral role water plays in the
state. On this updated version, it is easier to see California’s
natural waterways and man-made reservoirs and aqueducts
– including federally, state and locally funded
projects – the wild and scenic rivers system, and
natural lakes. The map features beautiful photos of
California’s natural environment, rivers, water projects,
wildlife, and urban and agricultural uses and the
text focuses on key issues: water supply, water use, water
projects, the Delta, wild and scenic rivers and the Colorado
River.
As part of the historic Colorado
River Delta, the Salton Sea regularly filled and dried for
thousands of years due to its elevation of 237 feet below
sea level.
The most recent version of the Salton Sea was formed in 1905 when
the Colorado River broke
through a series of dikes and flooded the seabed for two years,
creating California’s largest inland body of water. The
Salton Sea, which is saltier than the Pacific Ocean, includes 130
miles of shoreline and is larger than Lake Tahoe.
The Pacific Flyway is one of four
major North American migration routes for birds, especially
waterbirds, and stretches from Alaska in the north
to Patagonia in South America.
Each year, birds follow ancestral patterns as they travel the
flyway on their annual north-south migration. Along the way, they
need stopover sites such as wetlands with suitable habitat and
food supplies. In California, 95 percent of historic
wetlands have been lost, yet the Central Valley hosts some of the
world’s largest populations of wintering birds.
The Imperial Valley in the
southeastern corner of California receives the Colorado River
Basin’s single-largest share of water to support much of the
nation’s fruit and vegetable supply and hay for the
cattle and dairy industries.
Water from the Colorado River transformed the sagebrush and
desert sands of the Imperial, Coachella and Palo Verde valleys
into lush, green agricultural fields. The growing season is
year-round, the water plentiful and the local economies are based
almost entirely on farming. As the waters of the Colorado River
allowed the deserts to bloom, they allowed southern California
cities like Los Angeles and San Diego to boom. Suburbs, jobs and
people followed, and the population within the six counties
served by Metropolitan Water District of Southern California
(MWD) grew from 2.8 million in 1930 to more than 17 million
today.
