Our Voice: California must build on Salton Sea momentum
After far too many years lost to the indecisiveness of “let’s do yet another study,” momentum finally seems to be behind real efforts to “save” the Salton Sea.
The California Legislature recently approved a massive new water and parks bond that would provide $200 million for efforts to mitigate harmful effects of the drying up of the state’s largest inland sea. Gov. Jerry Brown, with his signature, has given the move his blessing, placing it before state voters on the coming June primary ballot.
Assuming voters come on board, this will more than triple the current $80.5 million in state funding allocated for mitigation work at the sea.
We’ll weigh in more specifically on the wisdom of the roughly $4 billion bond package for the state closer to the election. But the fact that lawmakers in Sacramento have finally acknowledged that this disaster in the making in our far-flung corner of California is something they are responsible to make right is a good sign.
MORE: Bond measure would boost sea efforts
MORE: Activists raise voices on sea's behalf
A coalition of environmental groups recently sent out a memo calling for action at the sea. Audubon California, the Environmental Defense Fund, Defenders of Wildlife and the Pacific Institute say there’s no need to wait on state voters months from now before accelerating efforts to prevent what is projected to be a true environmental disaster in our own backyard.
We agree.
We’ve long called for the state to live up to the commitment it made as part of the historic 2003 Quantification Settlement Agreement that shifted massive amounts of Colorado River water from farm use (and eventual flow into the Salton Sea) to urban customers in the Coachella Valley and San Diego. In order to complete the deal, the state agreed to restoration work while Imperial Irrigation District was to provide mitigation water flows to help keep the sea stabilized.
Those mitigation flows stop at the end of 2017 and forecasts are that the sea’s already receding shorelines will retreat much faster in coming years, exposing more and more lakebed tainted from decades of agricultural runoff. That portends a bleak future of dangerous dust storms plaguing a region already seen as a hot spot for respiratory illnesses.
A drastically diminished sea (estimates are it will lose a third of its size in the next 30 years without mitigation flows) also would be a tough hit to the ecosystem, as the body of water is a key stop along the Pacific Flyway for migratory waterfowl. Already there are signs that the degradation of the lake in the past 15 years has been harmful to wildlife as water salinity has continued to rise.
The coalition of environmental groups is calling for the state to get to work immediately on projects at the sea that would keep the momentum for action going. A pot of state and federal funds already exists for such work and some of these projects are indeed “shovel ready.”
Once work is occurring in earnest, we expect the positive aspects will only increase both momentum and resolve at the state level to keep it going.
The State Water Resources Board must put into writing, sooner rather than later, exactly how the state will live up to its years-ago promise to restore the Salton Sea and prevent it from becoming an environmental hazard. Too much time has been wasted bringing us to the doorstep of the critical water cutoff deadline.
We also expect that all of our representatives in Sacramento and on Capitol Hill in Washington – Assembly Members Eduardo Garcia, Chad Mayes, state Sens. Jeff Stone and Ben Hueso, Congressmen Raul Ruiz and Juan Vargas and U.S. Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Kamala Harris – will continue pressing for funds to do this job right.