Salton Sea Rehab Work Expands, Groundbreaking Ceremony Held

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: Patch/Palm Desert, CA

Posted Tue, Oct 15, 2024 at 3:42 pm PT


SALTON SEA, CA — Federal and local officials gathered Tuesday at the Salton Sea to celebrate the groundbreaking of an expanded restoration project at the south end of the vast water body.

The Species Conservation Habitat Project comes after the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation awarded California $70 million in December from the Inflation Reduction Act to continue rehabbing the sea.

The latest investment is a portion of the $250 million in federal funding that U.S. Senator Alex Padilla (D-Calif., Congressman Raul Ruiz, M.D. (D-Calif.-25), the late Senator Dianne Feinstein, and Representative Juan Vargas (D-Calif.-52) secured in 2022 for the Salton Sea Management Program.

"As the Salton Sea lakebed recedes, toxic dust is contaminating air quality and threatening the stability of the local ecosystem," Padilla said Tuesday. "The $250 million in Inflation Reduction Act funding we secured for the Salton Sea Management Program is essential not only to protect public health in surrounding communities, but to restore the habitat of the abundant aquatic and avian wildlife in the region. Today’s exciting groundbreaking of the Species Conservation Habitat Project expansion will expand critical wetland habitat and improve air quality around the hazardous exposed lakebed."

Read more: https://patch.com/california/palmdesert/salton-sea-rehab-work-expands-groundbreaking-ceremony-held

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Link to Department of Interior PRESS RELEASE - Interior Department, State of California Break Ground on Salton Sea Rehabilitation Effort

[SunSeeker]

1. Oh wow. That is great news!

I had no idea money for the Salton Sea was in the Act! The more you learn about the Inflation Reduction Act, the more you love it!

[BumRushDaShow]

2. That's why if I see articles like this

I try to post them!

[hunter]

3. Link to Salton Sea Management Program:

https://saltonsea.ca.gov/

Similar problems exist worldwide in these sorts of basins as a consequence of water diversion for agriculture and global warming. Innovative conservation efforts here may have wide application.

The Salton Sea has a very interesting geologic history. As the the Colorado River sweeps across its delta the basin is alternately filled and then dries out.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Cahuilla

[msfiddlestix]

4. More OUTSTANDING NEWS!!!

This is the sort of thing we can be so proud of and gives me a bit of hope for my granddaughter's futures here in California.

[bahboo]

5. excellent...

[LauraInLA]

6. I'm afraid this is on a collision course with another very necessary project, to encourage farmers to use less water.

https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2024-10-13/to-save-water-california-farmers-leave-fields-dry

[hunter]

8. There is quite a lot of farmland in California and Arizona...

... that ought to be returned to it's natural state.

For example, there is no good reason to subsidize the dairy industry. Cheap ground beef and gallon jugs of milk are not necessities. Cows can be raised elsewhere with fewer environmental impacts under more humane conditions.

Aside from burning fossil fuels, agriculture is the most environmentally destructive behavior humans engage in. We ought to do our best to minimize the environmental impacts of it.

Ideally we'd restore these unsustainable farmlands to a natural state BEFORE they become unprofitable and are simply abandoned as wastelands, the soils blowing away with the wind.

[LauraInLA]

9. Regardless of what happens to Imperial Valley agriculture (and I'd argue it shouldn't exist in the first place),

the Colorado River will almost certainly not be supplying the Salton Sea for the foreseeable future. The project actually discusses transporting water from much farther away. If and when we get desalination plants online and cost-effective, this all becomes “easier”.

[BaronChocula]

7. It might be an environmental catastrophe

but I got some nice pictures there. Yes I should have cleaned the camera before it took the pics.