Could I aspire to become
a 21st Century Nick, as I looked at the unruffled picture postcard water? The pristine blue landscape reflected the desert
sun. The tamarisk trees cast flimsy shadows on the lake’s surface. Southern California’s largest body of water,
the Salton Sea, exudes calm and natural beauty – as long as you have a clothes pin on your nose.
Pull it off and the stench
threatens to ramrod its way through your sinuses. This invasive redolence combines residues from agricultural runoff (pesticide
and chemical fertilizer), sewage from surrounding desert cities (Palm Springs, Coachella and Indio) and even some toxic waste
from maquiladoras in nearby Mexicali across the border.
The lake measures 35 miles
in length, up to 15 miles in width and has about 115 miles of shoreline. On the western shore, tens of thousands of carcasses
of dead and festering birds and fish belie its tranquil image and add to the pernicious odor.
In 1996, government agencies
affirmed that 1,200 endangered brown pelicans died of avian botulism. In addition, 19,000 waterfowl and shore birds from 63
species perished. In 1997, 10,000 plus birds from 51 species died. From January through April, 1998, 17,000 birds from 70
species caught Newcastle’s disease and avian cholera. The immune systems of thousands of eared grebes became weak, probably
from ingesting selenium, and they succumbed to avian infirmities. Their carcasses decompose on the shore alongside the skeletons
of fish. Some biologists predict that all the fish will begin to die as salt levels increase.
But a flood in the 1960s
preceded the overwhelming stink. Surrounding agribusiness owners had irrigated their overly-chemical drenched soil with a
huge increase of water. They did not consider the impact of their action on the Salton Sea. Residents had to abandon modest
retirement homes and vacation cottages. These vacant edifices loom like graveside monuments to the lake-side community that
had mushroomed on the edge of the Salton City after World War II.
The origins of the predicament
date back to 1905 when a dam in the Colorado River broke and water raced through mineral heavy canals for two years to collect
in a pre-historic dried-up lake bed. The new body of water contained a high salinity level. This new culture proved ideal
for certain saltwater fish, as well as a place where birds and ducks and geese could migrate and breed. Indeed, scientists
have observed almost 400 species of birds at the sea. During the 1950s, experts estimated that in winter some four million
birds used this artificial water body. Indeed, for flying non-insects, it became the most utilized sea in the nation. New
flora grew on the shore: Desert scrub, creosote bush, saltbush, and tamarisk.
Developers and speculators
built tourist facilities that serviced some 200,000 visitors a year, including campsites, trails, playgrounds and boat ramps.
The lake became a virtual speedway for boat racers who took advantage of the high salt content that gave their craft more
buoyancy. Water and jet skiers roared past annoyed fisherman. By 1958, the North Shore of the lake sported a Yacht Club, with
one of the largest marinas in Southern California. In the 1950s, Jerry Lewis docked his boat there. Desi Arnaz and Johnny
Weissmuller played on the 18-hole golf course and hung around Salton Bay Yacht Club. Bulldozers paved the streets.
These forsaken structures
have shed their paint. Motels and yacht clubs, places from which water skiers once took off, have also lost their essence:
the neon has dripped out of their signs.
Like other ghost towns
that once vibrated with life and crackled with festivity, some of the Salton Sea communities now symbolize ecological disaster:
conditions that arise when hustlers attempt to manipulate Nature for profit without acknowledging that the future may involve
very high costs. Like Melville’s white whale, the Salton Sea today threatens to become a metaphor for Biblical punishment.
“You have gone too far,” the great voice in the sky might have roared. “You are threatening Nature!”
“Hey, that’s
the nature of capitalism,” the developers might well have replied.
To regain their profitable
relationship with people and Nature on the Salton Sea, the “men of progress” call upon “science,”
the ubiquitous magician, to solve environmental messes.
“Fix it,” they
metaphorically order the men in white lab coats. “And get the government [taxpayers, not corporations] to pick up the
tab.”
So, EPA, The Department
of the Interior, the Bureau of Land Management and various California agencies contacted scientists who dutifully began to
study this putrid body of water more than three decades ago. They differ about how to apply their magic to sections of the
lake, in some areas fifty feet deep, covered with thick layers of viscous silt. Some marine biologists wonder if anyone can
clean up this peanut butter-like deposit of chemical slurp that looms as a major ecological calamity.
Nature seemed to rebel
in the form of an ecological chain reaction. Altering the flow of Colorado River water to create the Salton Sea also led to
the diversion of River water to irrigate the Imperial Valley. The ensuing runoff flowed naturally into the unnatural Salton
Sea. When farmers poured their “excess” water into the Sea, the Sea rose – having no outlet for the excess
water – and flooded the shoreline residents, including those on land belonging to the Torres-Martinez reservation.
Geologists call the Salton
Sea a “terminal” water body, one that receives water flow, but has no outlet. So, it had no place to send the
agricultural run off, post irrigation water that contains chemical fertilizers, pesticides, selenium and other minerals and
salts – other than onto the shore, with its people and edifices.
The levels of poisonous
materials have risen steadily. The Sea diminishes only through evaporation. Allowing it to dry up would mean that poisonous
selenium dust would infect all living things in the area. In 2004, scientists estimate that the Salton Sea contains 25% more
salinity than the ocean. Even most saltwater fish cannot survive in it. Today, the Sea's ecosystem suffers from significant
stress. Several million fish and birds have already died from disease and depressed levels of dissolved oxygen.
Not all the nearby residents
have fled, however. In the eastern shore communities of Bombay Beach and the Slab City trailer community, some people live
on meager social security checks. “I like it better here than in rural Alabama,” says a man with confederate flag
sewn on his trucker’s cap.
The bar flies at Bombay
Beach’s Ski Inn drink, smoke and gossip about daily life. They have become accustomed to living in an environmentally
challenged area. From the bar, they drive in Mad Max vehicles to their trailers or small homes. The disgusting odor that pervades
the western bank occasionally infiltrates their community as well. It seems worse in the summer when the thermometer rises
above 110 degrees.
Some fishermen still drop
their line in the lake and duck hunters hide in the blinds on the lake shore. “I sure hope they don’t eat what
they catch or shoot,” says a man who has watched the Sea deteriorate over the decades.
The residents wait for
the conflicting interests, like urban water authorities, conservationists, agribusiness, and native peoples, to figure out
a “cure” for their ecologically diseased Sea.
One interested party, the
Torres Martinez tribe had to change their life in 1905 when the Colorado River water overflowed their reservation. Like the
fauna, flora and people in the area, these Native Americans adapted to the new environment and abandoned their traditional
hunting and gathering culture for fishing and modest farming, as they debate whether to build a Casino. In the 1960s more
flooding and increasing salinity and pollution of the Sea further threatened their future.
The Salton Sea, like the
Aral Sea in Central Asia, which is 400 times its size and shrinking fast, symbolizes ecological catastrophe. Soviet industrial
“planners” had treated Nature just as the California capitalist developers did: they employed “productive”
technology without calculating – or even thinking about – consequences. Nearby resident animals and plants suffered
horrendous consequences.
But humans learn slowly.
They know that reproduction of the species requires a healthy environment – clean air and water and uncontaminated soil.
But some of the smartest engineers can lose sight of that truism when offered the chance to manipulate Nature for short-term
profits.
Indeed, these “forward
looking” individuals view Nature as something to dominate, not nurture. Will it take the rule of romantic poets to teach
that tornadoes, hurricanes, El Niños scream metaphoric messages? “Hey, there’s something more powerful than all
of you!”
Environmental nightmares
like the Salton Sea have not humbled those who exude “progress” but lack the sensitivity to understand that serious
lessons follow the modification of the earth’s ecology.
Wordsworth’s Nature meant:
“the language of the sense,
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
Of all my moral being.” (“Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern
Abbey”)
