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.
Want to produce a huge amount of lithium for electric vehicle
batteries — and also batteries that keep our homes powered
after sundown — without causing the environmental destruction
that lithium extraction often entails? Then the Salton Sea may
be your jam. Companies big and small have been swarming
California’s largest lake for years, trying to find a
cost-effective way to pull out the lithium dissolved in
scorching hot fluid deep beneath the lake’s southern end. Now a
new federal analysis suggests even more of the valuable metal
is buried down there than we previously understood. -Written by LA Times columnist Sammy Roth.
When Californians talk of lakes, they usually mean reservoirs,
the 1500 or so artificial bodies of water behind dams.
Alternately, they may be referring to the 4,000 or so natural
lakes in the Sierra Nevada or to one of the few large natural
lakes in the state, such as Lake Tahoe or Clear Lake. But some
of the most interesting lakes in the state draw our attention
mainly when demand for water threatens to dry them up. These
are terminal lakes, that mostly depend on seasonal rain or snow
melt to maintain them as lakes. They are called terminal lakes
because water flows into the basins through streams, but leaves
mostly by evaporation or sinking into underground aquifers.
Each lake has its own unique chemistry and other
characteristics, although most are highly productive so are
important to migratory waterfowl and invertebrates.
About 3 miles east of Bombay Beach, and a half-mile back from
the Salton Sea’s receding shoreline, the crunchy exposed playa
gives way from a mostly empty white landscape to more and more
native vegetation, and then suddenly a few shallow ponds
appear, surrounded by dense vegetation. The Bombay Beach
wetlands are an unexpected side effect of the shrinking sea,
and Audubon California is eyeing this phenomenon as at least a
partial solution to the complex issues at the Salton Sea.
Proposals abound aimed at mitigating the effects of the sea’s
quickly receding shoreline, from importing water from Mexico’s
Sea of Cortez (still just an idea) to the state’s 4,000-acre
habitat restoration along the sea’s southern edge (nearing
completion).
Imperial Irrigation District Division 2 Director JB Hamby has
announced his candidacy for re-election to the IID Board of
Directors in the March 5 primary, according to a press
release. Elected to the board with 66 percent of the vote
in 2020, Hamby’s division covers parts of El Centro, Heber,
Holtville and Seeley. … In less than three years, Hamby
has delivered on major initiatives at the IID. He worked to
secure a historic $250 million investment for the Salton Sea
from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation for projects to protect
public health and habitat in close coordination with
Reclamation and the state of California, according to the
release. Earlier this year, he was elected chairman of the
Colorado River Board of California and serves as the
Colorado River Commissioner for California, where he has
established close working relationships with the seven Colorado
River Basin States and Department of the Interior officials.
Who could forget last May, when Arizona, California and Nevada
made a three-year pact to conserve water from the Colorado
River? Many thought it couldn’t be done, but with Lake Mead
reservoir levels at a historic low, and the federal government
poised to wrest control of the process, the states agreed to
conserve 10 percent of their water — nearly a billion gallons —
between now and 2026. The deal, greased by an unusually wet
winter, was made possible by $1.2 billion in funding from the
Inflation Reduction Act that would pay water users to conserve.
But those payments, whose contracts are being finalized, may
come with a heavy toll over how much the feds are prepared to
shell out. A new investigation from POLITICO shows that much of
the water states agreed to save under new federally-funded
contracts was already accounted for under cheaper, pre-existing
agreements.
[John Brooks] Hamby 27, … California’s
boyish-looking representative on issues concerning the river,
sat shoulder-to-shoulder with the other states’ powerful water
managers, many of whom have decades of experience, an almost
uncomfortable sight given their latest brawl over the
beleaguered Colorado River. … Combined, these roles
position Hamby as arguably the most powerful person involved in
talks on the future of the Colorado River, a waterway that
is relied upon by an estimated 35 million people and
supports about $1.4 trillion worth of commerce. They
also place him at the center of the river’s most consequential
moment since midcentury, when Arizona and California went
to the Supreme Court to fight over the amount of water
they were allocated.
Earlier this month, an article was released by ProPublica
that “exposes” Imperial Valley family farms for using water to
grow food. The article estimated how much Colorado River water
20 farm families were using on their lands, comparing that
amount to other competing uses, and then listing each family’s
water us … by name. This is truly frightening, given the
polarized nature of today’s society. The consumptive water
use estimates were derived from data generated through a
program called “OpenET”, which makes satellite-based estimates
of evapotranspiration (ET) publicly accessible. -Written by Dan Keppen is executive director of Family
Farm Alliance.
Craig Elmore’s family history is the stuff of Westerns. …
Thanks to [Elmore's grandfather's] marriage to a citrus
magnate’s daughter, reputed good fortune as a gambler and
business acumen, he amassed the Elmore Desert Ranch, part of
roughly 12,000 acres that two branches of the family still
farm. All that land in the blazing-hot southeastern corner
of California came with a huge bonanza: water from the Colorado
River. In 2022, the present-day Elmores consumed an estimated
22.5 billion gallons … That’s almost as much as the entire
city of Scottsdale, Arizona, is allotted. That puts the
Elmores in exclusive company. They are one of 20 extended
families who receive fully one-seventh of the river’s flow
through its lower half — a whopping 1,186,200 acre-feet, or
about 386.5 billion gallons, the analysis showed.
After years of studies, public meetings and deliberation over
the future of the receding Salton Sea, the first visible signs
of major projects at the sea are starting to appear. Local
and state officials are hoping to build on the momentum
generated by the near-completion of the largest project at the
sea to date: The 4,100-acre Species Conservation Habitat
Project along the sea’s southern edge should be finished by the
end of the year; a pilot project along the northern edge is
officially in the works; and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
is in the early stages of a feasibility study focused on
potential long-term solutions at the Salton Sea. … With
further reductions expected due to mandated cuts to Colorado
River water use, the crisis at the Salton Sea has taken on
additional urgency over the past few years.
… Last year, San Diegans paid almost $148 million to the
Imperial Irrigation District for what amounts to just over 40
percent of San Diego’s water supply. That funds about half of
the Imperial Irrigation District’s budget on the water side, an
agency that operates almost debt free. (It also operates a
public energy utility with an over $775 million budget.) And it
was the San Diego deal that paid $5.7 million for this
reservoir. … The water San Diego buys from Imperial
Valley is some of its most expensive supply. A few San Diego
political leaders have suggested the Water Authority sell off
that water, arguing that the region doesn’t need all of it as
rates continue to rise despite San Diegans using less.
It was a rough debut. JB Hamby, 26 years old, had rocketed to
the innermost circle of state and federal officials charged
with saving the Colorado River from collapse. In mid-January,
he was elected to chair California’s river board, representing
Imperial Irrigation District, by far the biggest recipient of
the overused river’s supply. Federal officials had bluntly
threatened to impose mandatory cuts across the region if huge
voluntary reductions weren’t made. But 12 days later, after
contentious closed-door talks, he watched in dismay as media
outlets across the U.S. published stories about six states
releasing a joint plan to save the river, with only his state,
California, refusing to sign on. It was a baptism by near
drowning for the youngest “water buffalo,” as negotiators of
Colorado River agreements have historically called themselves.
A long-envisioned project that would create a separate lake
along the north shore of the Salton Sea, providing recreational
opportunities and habitat for fish and birds, is slowly inching
closer to reality. Local and state officials gathered on
Thursday to celebrate a key milestone on the North Lake Pilot
Demonstration Project: the beginning of geophysical surveys to
study the area’s soil, which will be used to make decisions on
the project’s design. The project is still at least a year away
from an official groundbreaking, but officials are keen to
celebrate any progress on efforts at the Salton Sea, where the
receding shoreline has left residents breathing in toxic dust
for years while important bird and fish habitat also
shrinks.
In the final installment of his trilogy of books about
California’s landscape, Obi Kaufmann tackles terrain that’s far
more diverse and lively than most Californians realize. “The
Deserts of California: A California Field Atlas,” out this
month from Heyday, takes readers from the Salton Sea to Mono
Lake and beyond in an exploration of the eastern side of the
state. Along the way, you’ll learn about plants endemic to the
San Bernardino Mountains; the endangered California bighorn
sheep of the Sierra Nevada; and the resilient pupfish
populations found in spots like the Death Valley basin and
Amargosa River.
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.
The Colorado River provides water to 40 million people and 4
million acres of farmland in a region encompassing some 246,000
square miles in the southwestern United States. The 32-page
Layperson’s Guide to the Colorado River covers the history of the
river’s development; negotiations over division of its water; the
items that comprise the Law of the River; and a chronology of
significant Colorado River events.
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 Pacific Flyway is one of four
major North American migration routes for birds, especially
waterfowl, and extends from Alaska and Canada, through
California, to Mexico and 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, 90 percent of historic wetlands have been lost.
Southern California’s Imperial Valley is home to California’s
earliest agricultural
drainage success story, one that converted a desert landscape
to an agricultural one, but at the same time created far reaching
consequences.
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.
