Water began to flow from the pipes to hundreds of acres of dry sunscreen lake beds as California officials buried shallow ponds near the south shore of the Salton Sea, providing fish and bird habitat and controlling the dust that hurts the lungs around the wet lakes.
The project represents the state’s greatest effort to address the environmental issues that plague the Salton Sea. This has steadily retreated and left behind as the growth of the dusty lake bottoms exposed to desert winds.
California’s Secretary of Natural Resources Wade Crowfoot celebrated what he called a major milestone as the water was washed away in the newly constructed basin and spread into cracked soil on Thursday.
“In this project, this water will contain harmful dust as the Salton Sea recedes, and will provide thousands of acres of habitat for the wildlife for birds that use it as a resting stop on the Pacific Flyway,” Crowfoot said.
“It’s positive evidence that difficult and difficult projects are possible,” he said. “We are proud to have our progress stabilize the oceans for our community and nature.
The Imperial County habitat area is filled with water after an adjacent area called East Pond received its first water in April. In the coming weeks, state officials said flooding in these sections will pay off the first 2,000 acres of the Species Conservation Habitat Project, a central effort in California’s plans to improve the situation at the state’s largest lake.
The $200 million project was originally supposed to cover 4,100 acres. The project has completed much of the construction. However, the state’s latest plan calls for an additional $245 million in federal funds set aside by the state in 2022 to expand the project to more than 9,000 acres.
The Salton Sea covers more than 300 square miles in Imperial and riverside counties. It is located about 242 feet below the Salton Trough and circulates during thousands of years of dry, filling with Colorado River water.
From 1905 to 07, Colorado flooded the area and filled what became known as the Salton Sea. The lake has since been maintained by water discharged from farms in the Imperial Valley, but has been shrinking since the early 2000s, when Imperial irrigation districts began selling to urban areas growing into urban areas under an agreement with San Diego County and Coachella Valley agencies.
Lake levels have fallen by about 13 feet since 2003. The water is now almost twice as salty as the ocean, and continues to have salt due to evaporation.
Along the arid coastline, wind-blown dust contributes to harmful air pollution, primarily in low-income Latino communities, where people suffer from asthma and other respiratory diseases.
Announcing in 2017, the 10-year plan for the Salton Sea in California called for the construction of 30,000 acres of dust control projects and wetland habitat around the lake by 2028. The state is lagging behind these goals.
The newly launched wetland project has been in work for over a decade and has been postponed for a long time, said Eric Montoya Reyes, executive director of the nonprofit Los Amigos de la Comnidad.
“Of the many needed, we acknowledge that we will surpass all of the efforts and obstacles to create our first significant milestone project,” said Montoya Reyes.
Montoya Reyes said he hopes the state will accelerate progress in the remaining projects and promote other planned projects that will curb dust in the Salton Sea. He said the effort should be prioritized considering the high respiratory disease rates in the area, driven in part by toxic lake be bed dust, knitting pesticides and other contaminants.
“We do a lot of work to impact our environment and human health,” he said.
Environmental advocates said the expanding wetlands could help rebound bird populations.
“It’s an important achievement and I’m really happy to see progress,” said Michael Cohen, a senior fellow at the Pacific Institute, a nonprofit think tank focusing on water issues.
The commitment of state officials to help address the effects of the decline in the Salton Sea is back more than 20 years ago. As part of a 2003 deal that moved some of the Imperial Valley water to the city, California officials have pledged that Imperial County leaders will be responsible for dealing with the environmental issues of the Salton Sea arising from the water relocation agreement.
For many years, imperial officials have been pressing to speed up long-term projects to build wetlands along the state’s retreated coast. In 2017, state water controllers adopted an agreement to target state agencies when building thousands of acres of ponds, wetlands and other dust control projects around the Salton Sea.
Cohen said the progress of the Habitat Project is “a great signal that the state is beginning to fulfill its duties.”
“And in the next week and months, we’ll see that there’s a huge number of birds on this project and there are probably plenty of fish out there,” he said.
In recent years, evaporation has been sacrificed to the Salton Sea, and the water has gradually grown in salt. In fact, it is too salty for introduced species of fish, which previously provided a rich source of food for migrating birds. And there was a decline in populations of several once birds, including American white pelicans, double abdominal cor, and green with ears.
The state is touting the project as a “repair” to its habitat, but Cohen said he thinks the more accurate explanation is “repair.”
“The Salton Sea is constantly changing, and saying we are going to recover something suggests you’re going to bring it back to a certain point,” Cohen said.
The wetlands project is designed to create subsalinate habitats where fish and birds can thrive. It is mixed with saltwater from the lake and freshwater from a new river that takes in agricultural runoff and wastewater from Imperial Valley from Mexico, pumped into the wetlands where ponds, islands and balms were built.
Creating shallow water habitats at these low salinity levels, similar to the habitats that the lake provided over 30 years ago, is aimed at helping birds migrating along the Pacific flyways.
Gov. Gavin Newsom called the wetlands “a key step in California’s environmental leadership – bringing important ecosystems to life while creating clean air for communities around the Salton Sea.”
E. Joaquin Esquivel, board chair of the State Water Resources Control Board, said improvements in conditions in the Salton Sea were important for the empire and the Coachella Valley economy.
Esquivel said for too long that the Salton Sea “is actually one of California’s biggest assets, but is considered an unfortunate responsibility.” The ongoing project “turns the pages of that story,” he said.
Another small effort is planned on the East Shore, a lake near the Bombay Beach community. The Audubon California Group has announced it will receive a $5.2 million grant from the California Wildlife Conservation Board to support a 564-acre wetland habitat project on that part of the lake shore.
Andrea Jones, the group’s director of bird conservation and interim executive director, said the project “ensures that these wetlands continue to provide evacuation to species facing habitat loss and climate change challenges.”
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