Forgotten Destinations: Salton Sea

Salton Sea Shore

Article and photography by Natasha Petrosova

We were preparing for our trip to Salton Sea area. Our final destination was Salvation Mountain and Slab City. But abandoned cities by salton sea and dead sea itself certainly draw our attention to stop and investigate the area. We decided to avoid a freeway and get to the area through Joshua Tree National Park. We cut across Joshua Tree National park left Mojave desert and came out in Colorado desert right by Salton Sea. As soon as we reached the area i noticed a strange and unpleasant smell. The area had post apocalyptic look with the surrounding structures standing in ruins. The sea was the dull blue of a cataract, surrounded by small volcanoes, bubbling mud pots, and ragged, blank mountains used for bombing practice by the Navy and the Marines . It was hard to imagine that once upon the time this area was known to be a paradise , "a germ in a desert ". What happened here ? why this area that was once flourishing with tourists, new constructions, yacht clubs and hotels is now deserted and crumbling ? To understand how this place turned from paradise to purgatory we need to know Salton Sea story.

Salton Sea is the most enigmatic areas in Southwest . It is a largest lake in California. It lands between Palm Springs resorts and Mexican border. Salton Sea came into being in 1905. "It was an accident stemming from a canal that diverted water from the Colorado River to the agricultural area of the Imperial Valley. There was an overflow, an unplanned change of course, and an inland sea was born. The tributary to the Salton Sea continued fill the fledgling lake, eroding the banks of other nearby lakes, and soon sucking them away, quickly filling the new lake with the liquidy remains". By 1906 it was a fully fledged lake, and surveyors noted that several species of waterfowl and pelicans were nesting in the area. The lake continued to grow until Union Pacific closed the river breach, and cut off the tributary. By 1950 salton sea area was booming . It was a California version of "French rivera" , the area quickly became a playground for rich and powerful. The area used to have numerous luxury resorts, hotels, piers , yacht and thousand of visitors including celebrities like Frank Sinatra. It was a same year 1950 when California Department of Fish and Game made a concerted effort to stock the Salton Sea with fish. Thousands were captured with large nets in the Gulf of California, and quickly released into the Sea. The Salton Sea quickly became a fisherman’s paradise. With all these new fish to eat, The Sea also became a new stopover point for migratory birds. As California built cities on its coastal marshlands, the Salton Sea became a critical part of the Pacific Flyway, part time home to millions of birds.

"By the late 1960s the Sea was beginning a metamorphosis. Rather than evaporating like a puddle in a parking lot as it had done over and over since prehistory, this time the Salton Sea stayed the same size. As it turned out, the Imperial Valley farms were dumping irrigation runoff water into the sea at the same rate as evaporation–about 6 feet a year. Unfortunately, salt and fertilizer don’t evaporate, so as the chemical-laden water from the farms poured into the basin, they combined with the already saline mixture of the Sea. Since the Salton Sea has no outlet, the salt and chemical levels increased every year while the water level remained the same. The Salton started to get murkier and murkier".

Then a cycle of bad things began. The first was the algae that fed on the fertilizer in the run-off. The vast, but short lived, algae fields created an enormous amount of rotten smelling, decaying matter as a natural part of its life cycle. The stench, combined with the oppressive heat, was, and still is, completely overpowering. Anyone with a sense of smell was forced to move away from the shoreline. Then came the floods. "Tropical storm Kathleen pounded the Imperial Valley in 1976 with record-setting rainfall, and the water had no place to go except the Salton Sink. In 1977, Tropical storm Doreen blew through the Imperial Valley, the second “100-year storm” in two years". Floodwaters consumed the marinas and yacht clubs along the Sea’s shoreline. With its main income stream cut off, the local economies quickly collapsed and property values plummeted. By the mid-’80s, the cities around the Sea were barely hanging by a thread. Whole flooded neighborhoods were just abandoned, and left to rot.

By the late 1980s, the wildlife die-offs began. "First, the fish began dying in biblical numbers when the all-consuming algae depleted the oxygen from the water. Feeding on the rotting fish, the birds contracted botulism. Almost every year through the nineties, tens of thousands of dead fish and birds washed up on the shore of the Salton Sea. When 150,000 Eared Grebes died in 1992, it was a disaster that completely overwhelmed the facilities of the Salton Sea National Wildlife Refuge. Their disposal incinerator ran 24 hours a day for months. The much smaller Brown Pelican die-off of the late nineties received massive media exposure and brought the plight of the Salton Sea into living rooms all across America. In the summer of 1999, 7.6 million Tilapia died from oxygen starvation caused by the overabundant algae. Their rotting carcasses rimmed parts of the Sea for over ten years. Combined with the decaying algae, it had to be smelled to be believed".

These days, in the 115-degree heat of summer the Sea stinks so bad that the reek sticks in your throat like Elmer’s Glue. Chemical-laced dust kicked up from its rapidly receding shoreline contributes to an asthma rate for local children three times higher than the state average. In the recent years because Salton Sea started shrinking and evaporating rapidly that will soon represent even e bigger health problem in Riverside county, Imperial Valley and even Los Angeles. It is predicted that the shoreline will recede by up to several miles, leaving at least 21,120 acres of sediments to the mercy of hot, dry winds. Salton Sea mud contains enough arsenic and selenium to qualify for disposal in a dump reserved for the most toxic of society's trash. Chromium, zinc, lead and pesticides, including DDT, are also in the lake bottom. The Salton Sea, the largest lake in California, encompasses about 380 square miles. It rests in one of the driest places in the nation. Gale-force winds are not uncommon.
These toxic chemicals could attach themselves to the fine particles of sediment when the lake evaporates and be able to travel far with wind driven dust and breathed by people. It believed that it could potentially be a health hazard.

Presently there are a number of ambitious plans to try to save the Salton Sea. Birds still flock there, unaware of the dangerous chemicals of the water. Most people avoid it. It’s become so polluted that it’s a danger to eat anything that comes from it, and it’s a wildlife preserve.

Salton Sea have been variously called a natural wonder, a national embarrassment, paradise, and the ecological equivalent of the Chernobyl disaster. And it’s only a hundred years old.

references:

Desert USA: http://www.desertusa.com/salton/salton.html

Salton Sea :the Assessment by Victor M. Ponce: http://saltonsea.sdsu.edu

Sordid history of the Salton Sea, by Jason Bellows: https://www.damninteresting.com/sordid-history-of-the-salton-sea/

Salton Sea : From Relaxing resort to Skeleton - Filled Wasteland , by Ella Morton: http://www.slate.com/blogs/atlas_obscura/2014/02/04/the_salton_sea_in_california_turned_from_a_relaxing_resort_to_an_apocalyptic.html

Lost America: The Salton Sea: http://lostamerica.com/photo-items/the-salton-sea/

The Salton Sea: Death and Politics in the Great American Water Wars by Matt Simon: http://www.wired.com/2012/09/salton-sea-saga/