New Yorker - Long, Fascinating Article On The Death Of The Salton Sea
There is a place in the California desert where a pipe pokes out from a berm made of broken concrete and delivers freshwater to a dying sea. I stood there recently, on a beach of crumbled barnacles, and watched it gush. 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. The air smelled sweet and vaguely spoiled, like a dog that has got into something on a hot day. When the wind blew, it veiled the mountains in dust and sent puckered waves to meet the frothy white flow from the pipe. The sea, which is called the Salton Sea, is fifteen times bigger than the island of Manhattan and no deeper in most places than a swimming pool. Since 1924, it has been designated as an agricultural sump. In spite of being hyper-saline, and growing saltier all the time, the sea provides habitat to some four hundred and thirty species of birds, some of them endangered, and is one of the last significant wetlands remaining on the migratory path between Alaska and Central America.
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For most of the farmers, cheap water is a birthright, and they are loath to part with it at any price. But by the late nineties the situation in the Imperial Valley had begun to look absurd. Historically, California had used more than its allotted 4.4 million acre-feet of water from the Colorado. With growing populations, Arizona and Nevada now wanted their water for themselves. But California’s cities were growing, too. Rural, sparsely populated Imperial County evidently had more than enough, however. In order to bring California back down to 4.4 million, Imperial was going to have to share its water with the urban coast.
The 2003 agreement with San Diego was part of a larger deal called the Quantification Settlement Agreement, which also included the transfer of as much as a hundred and three thousand acre-feet to Coachella. The valley stood to benefit handsomely. The deal provided payments to the Imperial Irrigation District (this year, the rate is six hundred and twenty-four dollars per acre-foot), a windfall that would be used partly to improve irrigation systems: installing drip lines and pump-back systems, lining canals and building automated gates. Knowing the chaos that would be caused by a dried-out sea, the architects of the transfer planned for “mitigation water,” achieved by fallowing farmland, to be added to the sea. Landowners with dormant fields would be compensated for each acre-foot of water that they didn’t use.
Still, the farmers were offended. Bruce Kuhn, who was the president of the irrigation-district board at the time, described the sentiment in the agricultural community as “How dare you?” He said, “Their grandfathers farmed with all the water they needed. Their fathers farmed with all the water they needed. I’m not saying they were spoiled, they just weren’t used to being told there were going to be limits.” Some pointed out that more efficient methods wouldn’t entirely eliminate the need for flood irrigation, which flushes the salts that accumulate around roots and eventually kill the soil. Outsiders, Kalin told me, have little appreciation of the reasons behind the valley’s farming practices. As the deal was being negotiated, the federal government applied pressure. At one point, it scrutinized Imperial’s water use, determined that it was not, in fact, beneficial, and suggested cutting the allotment. The community was enraged. According to “Unquenchable,” a book about water policy in America, a member of the county board of supervisors called it “the great water rape.” Nonetheless, the transfer passed, by one vote. Kuhn voted yes, and lost the next election, as well as lifelong friends and business for his levelling company. (He is back on the board now.)
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http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/05/04/the-dying-sea
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