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Salton Sea plan killed in Senate; bill never brought to vote; drive for restoration stalls

Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on May 23, 2008 at 6:32 am

From MyDesert.com:

State senators Thursday killed a bill to set up a new agency to oversee the dying Salton Sea’s restoration.

Senate Bill 1256 never came up for a vote in the Senate Appropriations Committee, which held the bill, as well as scores of other measures that were projected to add new costs at a time when the state budget is about $15 billion short. The committee staff had estimated the sea bill by Sen. Denise Ducheny, D-San Diego, could cost more than $800,000 a year to operate, though the staff analysis also acknowledged that many of the potential costs of the new agency were unknown.

“It stalls it big time,” Riverside County Supervisor Roy Wilson said of the restoration plan.

Peter Nelson, chair of the Salton Sea Authority board, agreed the committee’s inaction set back the project but acknowledged the budget is a major obstacle this year. “Any project in California that is going to spend money in this coming budgetary year is going to have a hard time getting traction,” Nelson said.

Still, the delay only makes the recovery work more difficult, he said of the sea whose drying lakebed will likely create air quality issues in the Coachella and Imperial valleys in the near future. “The tragedy for the sea is that every year that goes by, it will become more and more difficult to have a reasonable restoration plan move forward,” Nelson said.

Ducheney has said she might try another run at SB 187, the Salton Sea restoration bill, and is exploring her options on reviving this bill. She concedes it’s going to be a difficult sell this year.

Nelson emphasized the state is legally responsible to address air and water quality issues and said failure to meet those obligations will damage not only the environment but the health and economic viability of the region. But he added the sea is just one of the state’s stalled water projects that also include shoring the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, which is the switching station for the water serving 25 million Californians. “If you can’t get the Delta issue solved, how can we get the Salton Sea solved?” Nelson asked.

Read the full text of this story from MyDesert.com by clicking here.

May 23, 2008 · Filed Under Salton Sea

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