Water began flowing from a pipe onto hundreds of acres of dry, sunbaked lake bed as California officials filled a complex of shallow ponds near the south shore of the Salton Sea in an effort to create wetlands that will provide habitat for fish and birds, and help control lung-damaging dust around the shrinking lake. <\/p>\n
The project represents the state\u2019s largest effort to date to address the environmental problems plaguing the Salton Sea, which has been steadily retreating and leaving growing stretches of dusty lake bottom exposed to the desert winds. <\/p>\n
California Natural Resources Secretary Wade Crowfoot celebrated what he called a major milestone as water cascaded into a newly constructed basin and spread across cracked soil Thursday, launching one of the first portions of a long-promised project that was delayed for years because of challenges such as insufficient staff and the need to negotiate land-use agreements. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis project, this water will suppress harmful dust as the Salton Sea recedes. It will also provide thousands of acres of habitat for wildlife, for birds that use this as a rest stop on the Pacific Flyway,\u201d Crowfoot said. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s proof positive that difficult things, difficult projects are possible,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m proud of our progress stabilizing the sea for communities and for nature down here, with so much more work ahead.\u201d<\/p>\n
The habitat area in Imperial County is being filled with water after an adjacent area called East Pond received its first water in April. In the coming weeks, state officials said the flooding of these sections will bring to fruition the first 2,000 acres of the Species Conservation Habitat Project<\/a>, a central effort in California\u2019s plan for improving conditions at the state\u2019s largest lake.<\/p>\n The $200-million project was originally envisioned to cover 4,100 acres, for which the bulk of construction has been completed. The state\u2019s latest plan, however, calls for expanding the project to more than 9,000 acres, using an additional $245 million in federal funds<\/a> that the state secured in 2022. <\/p>\n The Salton Sea covers more than 300 square miles in Imperial and Riverside counties. It lies about 242 feet below sea level in the Salton Trough, which over thousands of years<\/a> has cycled between filling with Colorado River water and drying out.<\/p>\n From 1905-07, the Colorado flooded in the region, filling<\/a> what became known as the Salton Sea. The lake has since been sustained by water draining off farms in the Imperial Valley, but it has been shrinking since the early 2000s, when the Imperial Irrigation District began selling a portion of its Colorado River water to growing urban areas under an agreement<\/a> with agencies in San Diego County and the Coachella Valley.<\/p>\n The lake\u2019s level has declined about 13 feet<\/a> since 2003. Its water is now about twice as salty as the ocean and continues to get saltier with evaporation, a shift that has caused drastic declines<\/a> in fish and bird populations.<\/p>\n Along the dry shorelines, windblown dust contributes to harmful air pollution<\/a> in low-income, predominantly Latino communities, where people suffer from asthma and other respiratory illnesses at high rates.<\/p>\n California\u2019s 10-year plan for the Salton Sea, which came out in 2017, called for building nearly 30,000 acres<\/a> of dust-control projects and wetland habitat around the lake by 2028. The state has lagged far behind those goals.<\/p>\n The newly inaugurated wetlands project has been in the works for more than a decade and is long overdue, said Eric Montoya Reyes, executive director of the nonprofit group Los Amigos de la Comunidad.<\/p>\n \u201cWe acknowledge all of the hard work and obstacles surpassed to produce the first significant milestone project, out of many needed,\u201d Montoya Reyes said. <\/p>\n Montoya Reyes said he hopes to see the state accelerate progress on the rest of the project, as well as other planned projects to suppress dust around the Salton Sea. He said the efforts should be prioritized given the area\u2019s high rates of respiratory illnesses, driven partly by toxic lake bed dust<\/a> laced with pesticides and other pollutants that have accumulated over decades.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have so much work to do that impacts environmental and human health,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n Environmental advocates said the expanding wetlands could help bird populations rebound.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a significant achievement, and we\u2019re really delighted to see the progress,\u201d said Michael Cohen, senior fellow for the Pacific Institute, a nonprofit think tank focused on water issues.<\/p>\n State officials\u2019 commitments to help address the effects of the Salton Sea\u2019s decline go back more than two decades. As part of the 2003 deal<\/a> that transferred some of the Imperial Valley\u2019s water to cities, California officials promised leaders in Imperial County<\/a> that the state would take responsibility for dealing with the environmental problems at the Salton Sea that would result from the water transfer agreement. <\/p>\n For years, Imperial\u2019s officials pressed for the state to speed up long-delayed projects to build wetlands along the retreating shores. In 2017, state water regulators adopted an agreement<\/a> setting targets for state agencies in building thousands of acres of ponds, wetlands and other dust-control projects around the Salton Sea. <\/p>\n Cohen said the progress on the habitat project is \u201ca huge signal that the state is starting to meet its obligations.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cAnd I think we\u2019re going to see in the next weeks and months that there\u2019s huge numbers of birds out at this project, and likely a lot of fish out there,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n In recent years, as evaporation has taken its toll on the Salton Sea, its water has grown progressively saltier \u2014 too salty, in fact, for fish such as tilapia, an introduced species that previously provided an abundant food source for migrating birds. And populations of once-numerous birds such as American white pelicans, double-breasted cormorants and eared grebes have declined<\/a>.<\/p>\n While the state has touted the project as habitat \u201crestoration,\u201d Cohen said he thinks a more precise description is \u201cremediation.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe Salton Sea is ever-changing, and to say we\u2019re going to restore something suggests you\u2019re going to bring it back to a particular point in time,\u201d Cohen said, noting that the effort is geared toward creating new, viable habitats that work with the lake\u2019s changes.<\/p>\n The wetlands project is designed to create lower-salinity habitats where fish and birds can thrive. A mix of saltwater from the lake and freshwater from the New River<\/a> \u2014 which takes in agricultural runoff from the Imperial Valley and wastewater from Mexico \u2014 is being pumped to the wetlands, which feature constructed ponds, islands and berms.<\/p>\n Creating shallow-water habitats with these lower salinity levels, similar to habitats the lake provided more than three decades ago, is intended to help birds migrating along the Pacific Flyway<\/a>, where shorebirds that depend on shrinking saline lakes have suffered declines<\/a> in recent decades.<\/p>\n