California’s largest lake is doomed

[XemaSab]

A week ago today a good-sized storm blew into Southern California’s desert off the Sea of Cortez, a.k.a. the Gulf of California. In the Salton Basin (a.k.a. the Salton Trough) north of the Gulf winds averaged 40 mph or so, with gusts above 60. The Salton Sea fills the lowest part of the Salton Basin and the winds churned that water, roiled up its murky, anaerobic depths, and released a cloud of stench, mostly hydrogen sulfide, into the air. People who’ve lived in the Basin are used to that smell, but last weekend the wind off the Sea of Cortez picked up that mixed hydrogen sulfide cocktail and blew it to Los Angeles. On Monday, air quality management districts got complaint calls from residents of Simi Valley, almost 200 miles from the Salton Sea.

It took a day or so before everyone agreed that the Salton Sea was to blame for the stench, and now a few more people are aware of the fact that it’s in trouble. There are plans to “fix” the Sea that would cost several billion dollars, which is getting no traction at all in Sacramento given rabid anti-tax sentiment in California. But “fixing” the Sea in the long term is futile, and the reason involves the Colorado River, plate tectonics, and — possibly — the Grand Canyon.


If it wasn’t for the Colorado River, the Sea of Cortez would extend well into California. Most of the Salton Basin lies below sea level, with only a 30-foot berm near Mexicali between it and the ocean. The Basin is a northern extension of the same rift that holds the Sea of Cortez, created by the north end of the East Pacific Rise as it works to splinter the west side of the North American continent. If it wasn’t for that 30-foot berm you could sail from Mazatlan to Coachella for the Music and Arts Festival, though you might need a snorkel to watch the Tupac hologram.

That berm is there because the Salton Basin/Sea of Cortez rift valley is where the Colorado River happens to reach the sea.

http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2012/09/16/californias-largest-lake-is-doomed/

[Hestia]

1. Saw a very interesting documentary on the Salton Sea and the people who still live there.

Seems have gone through quite a boom in 1950s and 1960s - a poorer man's Palm Springs. Something happened to the Sea, levels dropped, fish and birds die there everyday, which the park service cleans up! The Colorado River doesn't run there anymore which would flush it out. People sunk all their money in the area and are now pretty much stuck there, hoping against hope that the people come again to the Sea.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salton_sea

[Speck Tater]

2. What I find an interesting possibility is

if sea level rises by 30 feet, the height of the berm that separate the valley from the ocean, then the whole valley will fill up with sea water pretty much instantly. So future sea level rise will alter the geography of California pretty drastically.

[hunter]

3. There are many obvious engineering solutions.

My favorites would use the basin as a big energy storage scheme for solar power.

The political problem seems to be that we'd have to cooperate with Mexico and we might have to tax wealthy people and their useless financial gaming corporations.

Basically fresh seawater would be drawn from the gulf of California by some method that did not slurp up sea life, most especially the little Vaquita which humans have already screwed over by damming the Colorado.

This sea water would be pumped up "over the hump" and then flow down into the Salton Sea, generating quite a bit of electricity along the way.

Then a smaller amount of water from the foulest places of the Salton Sea could be cleaned up and stored using some fraction of the energy generated by the descending seawater. In times of solar or wind energy surplus, this cleaned up salty water could be and pumped back up the grade maybe into Laguna Salada, a shallow below-sea level basin west of Mexicali.

But I don't think anything like that will happen. Instead the Colorado River will have less and less water. From Phoenix to San Diego many people will no longer be able to afford food, water or air conditioning and they will move away to become the undocumented workers of Canada. The Salton Sea will become a more toxic cesspool until it drys up entirely, and then one day rising oceans will fill it in a single catastrophic breech.