As Salton Sea faces ecological collapse, a plan to save it with ocean water is rejected
By Patrick J. Michaels
Dec. 7, 2012 7:52 p.m. ET
The Salton sea, once a popular resort spot, is in danger of becoming an entirely different kind of desert as water levels rise by 30 feet in the next 90 years, threatening to turn it into an arid, brown wasteland covering the same 1,500 square miles as the Sahara. A new plan to save the world’s largest man-made lake is now in tatters after a political dustup over cost and politics.
The Salton sea, once a popular resort spot, is in danger of becoming an entirely different kind of desert as water levels rise by 30 feet in the next 90 years, threatening to turn it into an arid, brown wasteland covering the same 1,500 square miles as the Sahara. A new plan to save the world’s largest man-made lake is now in tatters after a political dustup over cost and politics.
In an era of rising sea levels, the Salton sea, a man-made lake in Southern California, could be underwater by 2029, in a scenario that underscores how sea level rise is one of the most pressing environmental challenges of our time, and how fragile the planet’s life-support systems are.
A plan to buy the sea from the U.S. State Department for $9.9 billion to buy the lake is now a political mess that threatens to block funding the administration requested for coastal restoration and other efforts to protect what could be lost, says John Stec, a specialist in the California coastal environment at the Natural Resources Defense Council.
“This is going to be a major political story,” Mr. Stec said. “We don’t know yet what they’re going to do about it. There are just too many questions.”
Salton Sea
A plan to buy the sea from the U.S. State Department for $9.9 billion to buy the lake is now a political mess that threatens to block funding the administration requested for coastal restoration and other efforts to protect what could be lost, says John Stec, a specialist in the California coastal environment at the Natural Resources Defense Council.
In an atmosphere of rising sea levels, the Salton sea, a
