MECCA, Calif. – The area around this town of date palms attracts two kinds of migrants – hundreds of humans who work the land, and millions of birds that stop to rest and gorge at the nearby Salton Sea. The sea is a 110-year-old, increasingly briny, shallow lake that covers 350 square miles but is dwindling fast.
It was actually an accident, created when Colorado River floods overwhelmed flimsy dikes, but it now fills crucial ecological niches in southeastern California. Its wetlands and fish attract as many as 400 species of migrating birds. As it disappears, officials are scrambling to fend off the consequences.
“It’s not a tragedy yet, but it could be a forthcoming tragedy if there is a failure of our government officials to take preventive measures,” said Roger Shintaku, director of the Salton Sea Authority, a quasi-governmental agency.
Every year, the north shore of the Salton Sea is a little further from this Sonoran Desert town, partly because of drought and partly because of the sale of Colorado River water to coastal areas. The migrating pelicans and grebes that hang out there have less fish to eat as the shallow water disappears. And the dust from now-desiccated shallows blows into the air and is easily inhaled by local children, whose asthma rates lead the state.
Environmentalists say there is some urgency to the problem. A recent report by the Pacific Institute, a nonprofit based in Oakland, predicts that in 15 years the water volume will decrease by 60 percent, 100 square miles of lake bed will be exposed and the water will get three times as salty. The average depth of the receding sea is now less than 30 feet.
The big fish, mostly tilapia now, could disappear. If so, migrating birds, like the brown pelicans on the shore here, will have little to eat. The exposed sand and dust, blown by desert winds, will contribute to dust clouds, making attainment of federal air quality standards impossible. Over 30 years, the cost of inaction, the Pacific Institute report argues, will be $29 billion to $70 billion.
“This is a disaster waiting to happen, if it hasn’t already started,” said Bruce Wilcox, who runs the environmental arm of the Imperial Irrigation District.
If nothing is done as the disappearing sea becomes more saline, said Stan Senner of the National Audubon Society, “we’ve left the birds no alternative.”
The Salton Sea, he added, “is a microcosm of the world. Everything will be increasingly managed as we leave fewer natural resources. The complexity of the issues grows as the resources are becoming more and more scarce.”
