California Desert Adventure ☀️
The Salton Sea
June 30, 2021
In short, the Salton Sea is an ecological anomaly, proof that sometimes Nature can create the conditions to kill itself despite its characteristic web of interconnected purpose. Then, add some human error and you get a full-blown environmental catastrophe… millions of dead fish and wildlife and a mass exodus of a once-thriving tourist hotspot.
Flash forward to my visit, I see that Art is attempting to heal the land and its neighboring Bombay Beach community.
It started millions of years ago when the San Andreas fault pushed out a basin 227 feet below sea level, the lowest point in the country outside Death Valley. This basin was filled with fresh water from the mighty Colorado River which busted through human-maintained and failing levees after massive flooding. The water filled the basin for 18 months creating a 381 square mile lake in the desert, the Salton Sea, California’s largest lake.
The Salton Sea became a tourist hotspot in the mid-century. Check out the vintage shots of its hey day here.
It’s hey day would not last, however. Without an outlet, the lake had no means of draining. Add the pesticide and fertilizer runoff from area agriculture and you had the beginning of the end for the Salton Sea. Its toxic water had nowhere to flow–nothing to do but kill a ton of fish and poison itself further.
Sure, you may imagine that these conditions were destructive in the Salton Sea, but allow these details to sink in:
By the 1990s, the shores of lake were littered with dead fish. And 150,000 eared grebes (small waterbirds) died on the Salton Sea between December 1991 and April 1992. Another 20,000 died in 1994. By 1996, type C avian botulism killed more than 10,000 white and brown pelicans and nearly 10,000 other fish-eating birds. More than 1,000 endangered brown pelicans died in the largest reported die-off of an endangered species. Eight million tilapia died in one day in the summer of 1999.
Source
The stench of this death still permeates in 2021 when I visited. Its current salinity level is 50% greater than ocean water and continues to rise as the lake evaporates. But area residents have livened up the shore with clever sculptures and art, just as they did Bombay Beach’s streets.
The toxic dust from all this is being studied–it is believed to cause respiratory and cardiovascular distress as well as learning issues in children.
What will become of this ecological nightmare?
Eerily quiet and still, the brackish lake mixed with the haze of the desert sky.
This structure was named after Sonny Bono who, as a Congressman, helped educate others on the environmental issues at the Salton Sea and secured funding to help the related avian health issues. (Close by is the Sonny Bono Salton Sea National Wildlife Refuge.)
See the Sea Devastation
Teehee
People are trying to help–but it will take awhile.
In the meantime, these displays bring people to the shore.
This is a real problem apparently… Bombay Beach’s volunteer fire department, the only firs responders in the area, often have to help motorists stuck in the sand.
Waiting for the subway…
A truly fascinating stop.
[…] Bombay Beach, California–an abandoned resort town turned artist community next to the Salton Sea, which I just told you about. To follow, a gallery of images from our […]