SCIENCE: THE SALTON SEA

First, some background info: I grew up in a very old house, filled with very old things. I spent a lot of my childhood listening to 100.7 WMMS (when it was still good) and digging through the attic, then assembling my treasures in a way that suited my tastes. One of my favorite collections (that now lives in my kitchen) is old, brightly colored cookbooks: the kind published by the appliance manufacturer or a particular brand of evaporated milk or vegetable shortening. And the highlight of my cookbook collection is one from the Imperial Valley Date Farmers, called DATE MAGIC.

Doesn't that look FABULOUS? Anyhow, this little book inspired a lifelong Aspergerian obsession with all things California Desert---dates, Queens of the Stone Age (and all that that implies), and most of all, the Salton Sea.







At the turn of the last century, the Colorado River was diverted in an effort to irrigate the Imperial Valley. Flooding combined with above-average rainfall over the next few years created a new body of water where an ancient lake once was. Birds flocked to it, and some intrepid fishermen introduced mullet, sargo, and corvina. Commercial fishing BOOMED; in fact, Salton Sea fishing replaced Atlantic ocean fishing during WWII.

By the 1950s, the real estate market descended on our little inland lake. The Salton Sea area was marketed as Palm Springs with a waterfront, "The Riviera of the West," and all the cool kids were there.

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How could all this possibly go wrong? Well, years of above-average rainfall meant flooding of waterfront property. Agricultural runoff increased salinity, decreased the oxygen levels, and there were massive, grisly die-offs of fish, then the birds contracted a vicious case of avian botulism, then cholera. Anyone with means moved away. 

These days, the area around the Salton Sea is reminiscent of your favorite post-apocalyptic wonderlands: vast expanses of undeveloped land (purchased decades ago as investment property and forgotten), flooded mobile homes,  painted garbage mountains, an abandoned military base, roadside nudists, and the occasional pile-up of fish and bird corpses. Before his death in 1998, Representative Sonny Bono pushed for legislation to preserve and restore the sea, but that could take decades, and the lake may dry up on its own account by then.

If you want to learn more about a century of well-intentioned agricultural interference turned into an ecological time bomb, check out the documentary Plagues and Pleasures on the Salton Sea, narrated by the only man who could do the place justice, John Waters.