As Salton Sea faces ecological collapse, a plan to save it with ocean water is rejected
The Salton Sea, a saline and alkaline lake that covers much of northern California, is about to face an existential crisis that could mean the end of its existence. It is surrounded by mountains so steep that the sea would be completely surrounded by land if it were lifted like a pancake. Water, salt, and alkali all flow down from the mountains and then flow into the sea. And because of a unique combination of factors — the rate and rate of evaporation, the chemical composition of the surface water, and atmospheric pressure — this water is more concentrated than any other ocean water on the planet.
This unique state of affairs has led to two key problems for the Salton Sea. The first is that the water is so salty that it is toxic when it reaches the ocean. (The ocean is about 40 percent salt, but the concentration is so high in the Salton so that it literally sinks into the ocean.) The second is that the surface water has the same amount of water evaporate as is in an ocean, so all the sodium and chloride from the water evaporate into the atmosphere where they form salt dust, which then falls and can create dust storms.
Both of these problems create an obvious problem for survival. If the surface water is too salty, it doesn’t have the right salt level to maintain a normal ocean water mass and the concentration of evaporated salts in the atmosphere is too high to allow this saltwater to fall to the ocean. So the rain that falls on the Salton Sea is laden with salt, which prevents its evaporation into the ocean. And if the clouds of salt become a dust storm, then it rains everywhere — washing out the entire region. And so the Salton Sea remains a salty lake that does not allow the water evaporates onto the sea because of a combination of salt and atmospheric problems.
The key solution would be to increase the evaporation from the Salton Sea, because it’s too much to let the rain and rainwater wash the sand away. There are a few ways that this can be done, but they all raise questions about the future of the Salton Sea.
One of the most controversial solutions to
