IN DEPTH: Dead sea?

SALTON CITY, Calif. -- It has been 96 years since Southern Pacific Railroad workers used train car loads of dirt and boulders to plug a gap through which the Colorado River had rushed out of its channel and down a silt-filled ditch.

During the more than a year that it took to shut off the flow, the Salton Sea was born in California's Imperial Valley.

Today its shoreline shrinks slowly with evaporation from the desert heat. And its lifeblood, runoff from the farms that ring it, could be cut off along with Nevada's ability to take extra water from the Colorado.

The sea's future, skeptics say, looks as bleak as bones from some of the millions of fish that have died here over the years. Their skeletons lie not far from dilapidated motels and marinas that thrived in the 1960s but succumbed to the lake's rising level at the time. These remnants are indications of things to come unless the sea can be restored.

Nearly a century after the river's breach, the sea's destiny again hinges on a man-made effort. But instead of being in the calloused hands of rail workers, the responsibility rests on the shoulders of politicians, lawmakers and wildlife officials who must decide to what extent the sea should be protected and at whose expense.

Farmers in the Imperial Valley south of Palm Springs have the rights to most of California's water that comes from the river. But Imperial Valley interests have been at odds with water officials in San Diego and Los Angeles over how much water they can give the cities and under what conditions it can be transferred without further degrading the sea.

A deal to resolve the problem fell through in December, but sources close to the negotiations say a compromise could be near and an agreement completed in the coming weeks. The parties have been gagged by Gov. Gray Davis from discussing details.

Without the agreement mandated by the Interior Department, Southern Nevada's chances to take crucial extra water from the river would be seriously jeopardized. The amount at stake, regardless of an agreement, would most likely be cut in half, down to about 15,000 acre-feet next year as the drought continues on the river's upper basin.

Without resolution in California, water officials in Southern Nevada would have to accelerate their search for additional water to eventually cope with the worst drought on the river's upper reaches since records began in 1906. The situation frustrates Southern Nevada Water Authority General Manager Pat Mulroy because, she said, "There is no common vision for the Salton Sea."

Critical to any agreement is how many billions of dollars the California agencies will have to pony up to keep the sea from becoming too saline. Over the years, evaporation and other factors have caused the sea to become increasingly more concentrated with salts, minerals and nutrients from the soils, making it 25 percent more salty than the Pacific Ocean.

The lake needs as much water as Las Vegas Valley uses in a year to maintain its current level. Losing that amount of water would, in 10 years, put the sea on a course to lose its 200 million fish and other marine life. As they die off, millions of migratory birds, including some that are endangered, stand to lose a primary stopover on the Pacific Flyway.

In addition to weaning California off its dependence on surplus water from the river, any plan agreed upon by the agencies must afford the sea environmental protection.

A settlement by water districts that serve the Imperial and Coachella valleys and urban areas from San Diego to Los Angeles would pave the way for Interior Secretary Gale Norton to lift the unprecedented ban she put on all surplus water withdrawals from the river. The ban took effect Jan. 1 after negotiations became stalled.

Caught in the bind is Nevada's access to more than 30,000 acre-feet of extra Colorado River water. That would be in addition to the 300,000 acre-feet the state is entitled to from Lake Mead each year. At 326,000 gallons per acre-foot, the annual allotment is enough to support the 1.5 million people who live in the Las Vegas Valley and the 35 million visitors who visit Southern Nevada each year.

The extra water amounts to drought insurance, since it can be "banked" or stored below ground in a deal with Arizona, where the goal is to accumulate 1.2 million acre-feet, Mulroy said.

"It's what we're depending on in the long term, in the next 15 years, to be able to bridge our supply needs while we develop other resources," she said Feb. 11, just before the authority's directors and members of the state's Colorado River Commission left for a tour of the Salton Sea and lower Colorado water facilities.

California is entitled to 4.4 million acre-feet of river water each year, most of which, about 75 percent, is used to water crops in Southern California.

From Andy Horne's perspective as both a board member of the Imperial Irrigation District and board president of the Salton Sea Authority, continued use of river water for agriculture is key to the survival of the sea as well as the local economy.

"We've been farming down here 100 years, and I don't think Las Vegas as we know it existed 100 years ago," Horne said as he walked across a freshly picked field of iceberg lettuce.

"You've got a David-and-Goliath syndrome here," he said, referring to the 150,000 population of rural Imperial Valley compared to 18 million city dwellers along Southern California's coast.

"The rapid urban growth in the Southwest has put pressure on agricultural use of water," said Horne, a real estate agent for 25 years.

Since the breach was fixed in 1907, there has been no consistent source to refill the water lost from evaporation except irrigation runoff from the valley's sprawling fields of lettuce, broccoli, carrots, cantaloupes, strawberries, lemons, wheat and alfalfa: the $1 billion agribusiness that drives the local economy.

"This is the only place today that's growing lettuce right now. Fifteen percent of the country's winter vegetables come out of the Imperial Valley," Horne said. "This is the salad bowl of the country."

Horne said Imperial Irrigation District, with its agribusiness run largely by tenant farmers, is viewed by California officials as a "deep pocket" because it is the largest user of river water. He said the district has been threatened with everything from losing highway money to the Legislature dissolving the district all together.

Horne sees the situation as a three-way struggle among cities, farmers and environmental interests.

The solution for the next 15 years, he said, will be to transfer some of the district's river water to Southern California's urban areas and pursue a restoration project for the sea.

There are drawbacks. Less water for farming means some fields will have to be taken out of production under a process known as fallowing.

"If they start taking land out of production, everybody is going to be impacted," Horne said.

In addition to causing a ripple effect in the economy that would raise produce prices and increase unemployment locally, fallowing also would mean there is less runoff to compensate for evaporation.

That makes Horne wonder why pouring some river water into the Salton Sea doesn't meet the Interior Department's "reasonable and beneficial use" standard, which determines water allocation. Especially, he said, since filling artificial lakes and swimming pools meets the standard.

About a mile away at the Sonny Bono National Wildlife Refuge, 10,000 snow and Ross's geese fill the air like white confetti exploding in the azure sky. Protecting the lake was a pet project for Bono, the late celebrity and congressman whose widow, Rep. Mary Bono, R-Calif., now carries the banner.

At the 73-year-old refuge, manager Sylvia Pelizza said any plan to protect the lake will have to address seven endangered species among more than 400 species that rely on the sea and its marshes.

"We hold 80 percent of the white pelican population west of the Rockies and 20 percent of California's brown pelicans," Pelizza said. "This is a major stop on the Pacific Flyway. If you lose this, you'll lose millions of birds."

Bill Gaines, president of the California Waterfowl Association, agrees. Losing the Salton Sea would eliminate a core element of the state's remaining wetlands, which now stand at one-tenth the acreage they were a century ago.

"If you take one more critically important hub out of that wheel, it puts them under further stress," he said. "If we don't send these birds back up north healthy and able to reproduce, it would simply put further stress on the species."

The lake's oxygen level is depleted by huge algae blooms, which occur as the sea's concentration of salts, nutrients and minerals increase. This has caused millions of fish, mostly tilapia, to die.

Pelizza said the die off last year was not as bad as in years past, noting, "There were less than 500,000 fish dying."

Besides creating an odor and cosmetic problem, the die offs have caused botulism outbreaks among pelicans that eat live fish that carry the bacterium. Pelizza said five airboats are used in the summer to retrieve sick pelicans for treatment. "They do recover," she said.

Midway up the lake, Norm Niver, West Shores Chamber of Commerce president and a member of the Imperial County Planning Commission, keeps a fishing rod handy at the end of his dock. He prefers 6- to 10-pound orangemouth corvinas. They are fine eating, he said, either as raw "sashimi" or fixed as "corvina salads" or "corvina balls."

Niver, 73, has been a resident of the sea's main population center, Salton City, for more than 30 years. He is not alarmed by the lake's root beer-colored water and the rotten-egg smell of hydrogen sulfide in the dank air: gas from decaying marine life that bubbles through a backwater not far from his shoreline home.

Visitors believe the lake is toxic, but Niver says it's a misconception. In fact, it is the nutrient-rich water that makes the sea a prolific fishery. The water, except for the salt, meets Environmental Protection Agency drinking water standards.

Last year, Tom Kirk, executive director of the Salton Sea Authority, appeared before a House subcommittee to argue for additional money for the sea. He warned of dire ecological consequences should the lake's salt level reach the point at which fish would not be able to reproduce.

To keep the salinity in check, scientists are exploring several potential solutions, but which ones will be pursued is unclear. They range from expensive salinity control and diking projects to using nearby geothermal energy sources to remove the sea's salt and return distilled water to it.

A restoration project to handle a drastic reduction in inflow "would be so large that it would be infeasible to build and would cost well over $2 billion," Kirk told the Subcommittee on Water and Power.

This month, Kirk explained to a gathering of local homeowners that water officials are considering a temporary solution to the sea's troubles.

"The current deal would send water to the Salton Sea for 15 years to make up for the water that's lost," he said. "The idea is they're going to protect the Salton Sea for 15 years and then pull the plug. That's what I'm concerned about."

Under one possible solution, USFilter would construct dikes around the sea's south end to capture irrigation runoff and build facilities to desalinate it. Another expensive option would be to build 16-foot-diameter pipelines to exchange the lake's water with less saline water from the ocean or the Sea of Cortez.

Mulroy said the price of protecting the sea by any of these methods or a combination of them is mind-boggling. No matter what, an agreement that attempts to extend the sea's life during a 15-year test is only a temporary fix.

"When you hear price tags of $1 billion to $12 billion you start scratching your head," she said. "The sea is going to go hypersaline later. It's a matter of when. ... The fish are already dying."

Though Nevada has much at stake in the ongoing negotiations, Mulroy doesn't believe in the long term the sea should be the Las Vegas Valley's problem.

"I don't think there is anything Southern Nevada can realistically do" to influence developments in California, she said. "What we have to do is watch very closely how it develops. If we don't see any progress being made soon, then it's time to rethink the arrangement of interim surplus and for Nevada to seek its own solution."

The Salton Sea...has quite the storied history. When I lived in Calif. my family used to go down there a couple/three times a year to camp and fish.

I've alot of great memories of that place...Caught alot of fish out of there too. We've many pictures of multiple limits of big corvina......My dad and I used to gig bullfrogs in the marshes around the New and Alamo rivers too. I typically held the light in the frogs eyes...and my dad would gig um.

Had some weird experiences there too....once we were near the Southern end ( Red Hill Marina..) of the sea...and a great desert wind came up...blowing approx. south to north. The sea dropped nearly 2 ft. in the marina after that wind died down. Then there was the day...my mom was out in the boat with us....and it was probably 110 degrees in the shade...she got soo hot she said, "I'm burning up, I'm going swimming"...Well we were way, way out there...( I remember that sea/lake being around 20 miles long, and 10 or so miles wide...) and my mom decided not to jump in...( because the water was ugly looking, and smelled bad...even back then..) but just eased feet first over the side, and to everyone's amazement she stood on the bottom. It was a good thing ...she didn't dive in..!! Ha!!

Anyway...this article...brought back some nice memories. Thanks for posting......

FRegards,

The common thread in every Salton Sea story apprears to be having to read between the lines to get to the facts.

Here's what I got from the story.

Apparenlty when the federal government built Hoover Dam they entered into agreements with quasi-government agencies rather than States regarding the storage and dispersal of water stored in Lake Mead. Although many articles mention California's or Nevada's or Arizona's rights they are actually the rights of state chartered water districts within those states.

The arguments today appear to be two fold. First, what will these indiviual water districts do with their water and second, if these districts, who have the lions share of the stored water, don't use all their allocted water, who gets to use the left over?

It appears that the state of California wants the water districts, chartered by the state, to voluntarily share their water with urban areas who have no rights to the water and that the feds want these same districts to better manage their water so that the savings can be shared with districts that don't have as large a share. "Better manage" in fedspeak for "stop using so much".

Compounding this problem are Californians who centered their livelyhoods on an artifical, agricultural, run off sump and extreme enviornmentals who are trying to tie that same sump to natural species preservation.

The problem with the traditional livelyhood argument is that the source of the water is artifical and the problem with the enviornmental argument is temporal. From a species standpoint, the sump is not longlived enough to have a significant impact on natural species.

It is also apparent from between the lines that neither the states nor the feds have the legal authority to resolve the problem without the voluntary cooperation of these water districts. The state of California can apparently only use political and public relations pressure on the water rights holders and the feds can only demand that the terms of the controlling contracts must be followed. The enviornmentalist and livelyhood folks can only threaten economic hardships through the expense of litigation on these same water districts.

Not withstanding the above sidebars, the irony of these total proceedings does not change the fact that the Salton Sea is a man made drainage pond for agricutural runoff that served multipul purposes when the supply of water behind Hoover Dam was in excess of the public need.

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Southern Nevada has much at stake in negotiations over the future of California's Salton Sea