Locals organize protest against the state’s Salton Sea restoration plan; they want canal or pipeline plan from Gulf of California to be reconsidered

From MyDesert.com:

Longtime Salton City resident Rick Davis intends to save the dying Salton Sea, one gallon of fresh water at a time. Davis is organizing a local protest against plans to modify California’s largest lake. At 11 a.m. on Tuesday, he and others will each dump one gallon of fresh water into the sea. Davis said he’ll then continue to add a gallon daily through Jan. 6; then seven gallons, for a gallon a day, every Sunday thereafter.

He’s also circulating petitions of protest that he plans to provide to state and federal lawmakers for the Salton Sea region. “We want to restore, not modify, the sea,” he said. “We want it built back to what it was in the 1960s.”

Davis said his dissatisfaction comes from years of promises, plans and ultimate inaction from local, state and federal officials – all as the sea slowly evaporates, becomes more salty, and the fish within it and the economy on its shores die.

Davis and others are unsatisfied with the state’s preferred restoration plan, which includes a much smaller sea, mostly up at the north end. They would like to see more consideration given to a pipeline project bringing in water from the Gulf of California to sustain the sea.

Dale Hoffman-Floerke, director of Colorado River and Salton Sea office of the state Department of Water Resources, addressed the concept at the Association of California Water Agencies conference in Indian Wells last month. Hoffman-Floerke said Mexican environmental officials were approached with the idea. “It was met with disdain,” she said. “They were not even remotely interested in entertaining this subject matter.”

The Colorado River Delta at the northern end of the Gulf of California is a biosphere, a nature reserve protected by both the Mexican government and the United Nations.

Emmett, however, said more negotiation could work. “You get a good salesman like Arnold Schwarzenegger down there, talking to the governor, saying, ‘Here are the economic benefits to you. We’re removing the risk of dust storms sweeping into Mexicali,’” Emmett said.

Others remain skeptical.

Edward Glenn, a professor of soil, water and environmental sciences at the University of Arizona’s Environmental Research Lab in Tucson, noted that the Salton Sea is the only known area in the world where fish-eating birds contract avian botulism. The birds become infected, Glenn said, from eating infected tilapia who feed on pileworms in the oxygen-starved sediments of the sea. “Given that history, it would not be responsible to suggest dumping Salton Sea water into the Gulf of California,” he said.

Michael Cohen, a senior research associate with the Oakland-based Pacific Institute, an environmental, economic and social equity research group, also dismissed the canal-to-Mexico concept. “It’s eight to ten times the cost of the preferred alternative,” he said. “Frankly, I don’t think the preferred alternative is going to be funded.”

Cohen said he’s encouraged citizens see the need to save the Salton Sea. But people need to be realistic about what can be accomplished at the sea, and the amount of time left in which to accomplish it, he said. “If we continue to focus on grandiose schemes like a canal to the gulf, we’re not going to get anywhere,” he said.

To read the full text of this article from MyDesert.com, click here.

Yesterday, I posted an article written by Indio resident Richard Speed, expressing his views on what would be necessary for successful negotiations with Mexico – click here.

The pipeline project has been covered on Aquafornia before:

Salton Sea pipeline – is it a feasible alternative? Original Aquafornia article – click here.
Salton Sea, (background), part 1: click here.
Salton Sea, Open waterway or pipeline from Gulf of California, part 2: click here.
Salton Sea, “Dead Sea option”, part 3: click here.

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