As California’s largest lake shrinks, toxic dust chokes communities
Salton Sea pollution aggravates asthma
Kaylee Pineda likes to be outdoors. She rides her bike, plays Little League baseball and enjoys swinging on the monkey bars at school. When the wind picks up and the air turns hazy, she knows she needs to stay inside. The dust can suddenly trigger her asthma and leave her gasping for air.
“I feel like my chest tightens,” Kaylee said. “My heart starts pumping.”
An asthma crisis afflicts the low-income, largely Hispanic communities around California’s Salton Sea. The southeastern corner of the state has some of the worst air pollution in the country. Dust from farmland and the open desert mixes with toxic windblown clouds rising from stretches of exposed lakebed around the shrinking sea.
Imperial County has the highest rate of asthma-related emergency room visits for children in California. And the dust problem is about to get much worse.
For more than a century, California’s largest lake has been sustained by water from the Colorado River, which irrigates Imperial Valley farms and
drains into the water. The Salton Sea has been declining for years and will start shrinking rapidly at the end of this year when increasing amounts of river water will be diverted from farms to cities.
Tens of thousands of acres of lakebed will be left dry over the next decade as the shorelines retreat. Over the next 30 years, the lake is projected to shrink by a third.
Kaylee, 9, uses an inhaler every morning before going to school and every night before going to bed.
Sometimes, when her chest hurts and she struggles to breathe despite the medication, her mother drives her to a hospital.
Her mother, Eva Pineda, said she’s afraid more dust in the air will be disastrous for people’s health.
“I know asthma is going to get worse for the kids here,” said Pineda, who lives in the city of Westmorland. “If it doesn’t get fixed, there’s going to be a lot of ill people with breathing problems.”
California officials have known this crisis was coming for nearly 15 years. Under a water transfer deal in 2003, the Imperial Irrigation District sells increasing quantities of water to cities in San Diego County and the Coachella Valley. That agreement will leave much less water flowing into the lake.
After pressing for the farm-to-city water transfers, California lawmakers passed legislation in 2003 promising to “undertake the restoration of the Salton Sea ecosystem.”
State officials haven’t lived up to that promise.
California’s latest Salton Sea plan, which was released in March, calls for building thousands of acres of ponds and wetlands over the next 10 years to cover portions of the dry lakebed and create habitat for fish and birds.
Those 29,800 acres of ponds and wetlands, if completely built, would cover up less than half the lakebed that’s projected to be exposed within a decade — in all, more than 60,000 acres, or almost 100 square miles.
The state’s $383 million plan remains severely underfunded. California has budgeted $80.5 million, and policymakers are struggling to come up with the rest of the funding.
State officials said long-term fixes, which have yet to be decided on, will cost much more. After years of failing to secure funding for more expensive and more comprehensive restoration plans, they’ve dialed back their ambitions in hopes of rallying around a plan cheap enough for the Legislature to fund.
“Conditions are dire, and we have to do something now for habitat, and we have to do some- thing now for dust suppression,” said Bruce Wilcox, assistant secretary for Salton Sea policy at the California Natural Resources Agency. “This plan is a path forward to address air quality and habitat issues at the Salton Sea.”
Over the years, mass fish dieoffs and declining bird populations have signaled the lake’s deterioration.
The Salton Sea is saltier than the ocean and getting progressively saltier, which will eventually kill off the remaining fish.
Supporters said the state’s 10year plan will throw a partial lifeline to fish and birds, limit hazardous air pollution and build support for future spending.
Kim Delfino, director of California programs for the group Defenders of Wildlife, described the plan as “triage” for the Salton Sea, saying it would make a dent in the immediate crisis and hopefully create momentum toward longer-term solutions.
The lake was formed starting in 1905, when floodwaters from the Colorado River burst though canals and filled the low-lying depression in the desert known as the Salton Sink, covering an ancient lakebed.
Since then, the lake has become one of the prime spots for migratory birds along the Pacific Flyway, which stretches from Alaska and Canada to Central and South America.
During the past couple of years, biologists and birdwatchers have reported seeing troubling signs that the ecosystem is unraveling.
Recent counts have found fewer fish-eating birds, such as American white pelicans and double-crested cormorants.
Biologists said various types of birds are vanishing because they can no longer find enough fish to eat in the lake.
In towns near the shore, people complain about the dust and the foul stench of decay that blows in from the water.
“We’re sadly expecting a bunch of people to get sick, unless the efforts get ramped up even more,” said Kerry Morrison, who lives in Salton City, on the lake’s western shore and runs the environmental non-profit group EcoMedia Compass.
“We’re not trying to knock the state’s efforts,” Morrison said. “But it needs to be taken more seriously in high government, and they need to realize there’s a lot of people at stake here.”
Researchers have warned for years that if actions aren’t taken to control dust, the sea will become a costly disaster.
The Pacific Institute, a think tank focused on water issues, estimated in a report in 2014 that without significant steps to address the sea’s problems, the costs over the next 30 years could range from $29 billion to $70 billion, including higher health care costs for respiratory illnesses and lower property values due to the blowing dust and odors from the lake.
Pineda said state officials’ plan to cover portions of the lakebed with ponds and wetlands sounds good, but she has doubts about their ability to deliver.
“Is it really going to happen?” she said. “I don’t see they have it as a priority.”
“I know asthma is going to get worse for the kids here. If it doesn’t get fixed, there’s going to be a lot of ill people with breathing problems.” Eva Pineda