Salton Sea Management Program (2024)

FAQs

Who is responsible for managing the Salton Sea? ›

The California Natural Resources Agency, the California Department of Water Resources and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife are focused on implementing the Salton Sea Management Program (SSMP), which includes a 10-year plan that aims to improve conditions by constructing 30,000 acres of habitat and dust ...

The Salton Sea Management Program received $70 million from the federal Bureau of Reclamation in 2023 and has the potential to receive an additional $175 million contingent on Colorado River conservation agreements. IID = Imperial Irrigation District and SCH = Species Conservation Habitat project.

There is no shortage of ideas about how to fix the Salton Sea. Grander schemes include a $9 billion restoration project the state proposed in 2007, as well as a perennial pitch to pump water from the Pacific Ocean or the Sea of Cortez, which would also cost billions.

The Salton Sea Ecosystem Restoration Program, Final Programatic Environmental Impact Report (PEIR) and Final Range of Alternatives purpose was to develop a preferred alternative by exploring alternative ways to restore important ecological functions of the Salton Sea that have existed for about 100 years.

Three companies — Berkshire Hathaway Energy, EnergySource, and Controlled Thermal Resources — have been working for years on plans to extract lithium by taking advantage of the Salton Sea's rich geothermal resources.

Who owns the Salton Sea? The land under the Salton Sea is owned almost entirely by three entities. The largest is the Federal Government. The Bureau of Reclamation and the Bureau of Land Management under the Department of the Interior own the lions share.

This first phase of the Salton Sea Management Program (Phase I - 10-Year Plan) has been designed to speed up construction of the habitat and to suppress dust on areas of exposed lakebed that have been or will be exposed at the Salton Sea by 2028.

Looking beyond 2028: Addressing sea shrinkage, salinity

The idea of importing water from Mexico's Sea of Cortez or the Pacific Ocean off California's coast has been floated for years as one possible solution to the Salton Sea's declining water levels.

The plan calls for construction of habitat restoration and dust suppression on 30,000 acres of exposed lakebed and areas that will be exposed by 2028. The Species Conservation Habitat (SCH) Project is the state's first large-scale project to reduce exposed lakebed and create environmental habitat.

And the Salton Sea, the state's largest lake, relies on water draining from those fields to stay full. But it's been shrinking for decades, killing off fish species that attract migratory birds and exposing lake bed that generates dust that is harmful to human health.

What is odd about the Salton Sea? ›

Interesting Facts

The Salton Sea has no outlet. Its surface elevation is 227 feet below sea level.

But the sea's heyday was short-lived. Cut off from the life source that created it — the Colorado River — and sustained mainly by limited agricultural runoff from nearby farms, the landlocked waterbody began to evaporate. The water that remained became increasingly salty and toxic. Tourism dried up.

The New, Whitewater, and Alamo rivers, combined with agricultural runoff, are the primary sources that feed the lake. The Salton Sea is the largest lake in California by surface area.

Declining inflows in future years will result in collapse of the Salton Sea ecosystem due to increasing salinity and other water quality issues, such as temperature, eutrophication, and related anoxia and algal productivity.

In the early 2000s lake levels began to drop in response to lower inflows. In 2022 the approximate elevation of the lake was 240 feet below mean sea level, with approximately 27,000 acres of playa exposed around the shoreline.

Created in 1993 the Salton Sea Authority is a Joint Powers Authority (JPA) responsible for working in consultation and cooperation with the State of California to oversee the comprehensive restoration of the Salton Sea.

The Sea has since been maintained by irrigation runoff in the Imperial and Coachella valleys and local rivers. Because the Sea is a terminal lake, increasingly concentrated salts have resulted in a salinity that is currently 50 percent greater than that of the ocean.

The Salton Sea was formed in the early 1900s after a dam broke and flooded the Imperial Valley with water from the Colorado River. Today, its primary source is nearby farm runoff, which includes fertilizer, heavy metals and toxins like arsenic and selenium, Lo explained to CBS News.

In an attempt to turn the desert into lush farmland more than a century ago, humans tried — and temporarily but dramatically failed — to exert control over nature. "The Salton Sea in south California was created in 1905 when spring flooding on the Colorado River breached a canal," NASA's website spells out.