Salton Sea: Living Lake or Dust Field? [Opinion]

A Living Lake or a Dust Field. The Choice at the Salton Sea [Opinion]

There are two ways to look at the Salton Sea. One is to imagine water skis cutting across its surface again, families fishing from the shoreline, sailboats catching the desert wind, and the Coachella Valley finally having a true inland lake amenity.

The other is to accept a shrinking, dusty basin and pretend that throwing gravel and hay at it somehow counts as a solution.

Those are the only two choices: restoration or managed decline.

Picture what this valley once had and could have again: a recreational jewel in the desert, centered around a living lake. That future is not fantasy. It is entirely achievable if we decide we actually want it.

And the valley has already said it does.

All nine Coachella Valley cities, along with the Torres Martinez Band of Mission Indians and the College of the Desert Board of Trustees, voted to support the first step toward bringing ocean water from the Sea of Cortez to the Salton Sea by way of a pipeline, canal, or channel.

They voted for an engineering study. That matters. An engineering study is the starting line for any real project. Nothing gets built, financed, or permitted without engineering.

The geography actually helps. After a short pump uphill, it is all downhill. The Salton Sea sits 243 feet below sea level. Once water crests the high point, gravity does the work. Downhill sections can be designed with in-line turbines to recover energy and offset a meaningful share of pumping and operating costs.

This is routine civil engineering, not experimental science. Pipelines, canals, and large-scale water conveyance are precisely the types of infrastructure the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has built for decades.

What stands in the way is not engineering. It is preference.

The current approach relies on gravel, hay, dust suppression, trucking, hauling, and ongoing maintenance, none of which stops the unhealthy dust or the odor that drifts across the valley. None of it restores the Sea. All of it requires continuous expense, year after year, contract after contract.

A recent example is the 250-million-dollar shallow wetland constructed at the southern end of the Sea using the polluted New and Alamo River inflows. By capturing and isolating those flows, the project actually accelerated the Sea’s decline rather than restoring it.

It is a system designed to manage decline, not end it.

By contrast, once the infrastructure to fill the Sea is built, the job is largely done, restoring recreation, habitat, and stability.

A question always comes up when you talk about bringing seawater to fill an inland lake. If you bring in seawater, will that make the Salton Sea saltier?

The answer is simple. The Salton Sea is already far saltier than the Sea of Cortez. Bringing in ocean water would actually reduce the Sea’s salinity. Estimates are that for roughly seven years, inflow would significantly improve conditions.

After that, desalination becomes an option, not a problem, producing fresh water for a growing desert region. Arizona is already exploring this path because the Colorado River can no longer be relied upon.

If Arizona is willing to look south for long-term water security, the question becomes obvious. Why wouldn’t we?

We have a choice: a living lake, or a permanently managed dust field. Recreation, habitat, and water, or endless mitigation.

So the question becomes this. If all nine Coachella Valley cities voted for an engineering study, along with the Torres Martinez Band of Mission Indians and the College of the Desert Board of Trustees, why are we still putting down hay and gravel?