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California has launched the Salton Sea Conservancy, a new state agency to oversee restoration, manage habitat and improve air quality at the deteriorating inland lake.
On Friday Gov. Gavin Newsom announced the appointment of a 20-member conservancy board, with members from state agencies, Riverside and Imperial County governments, local water districts, tribal groups and public organizations. The new conservancy is the first created in California in more than 15 years, since the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta Conservancy was established in 2010.
The new body will direct state resources toward what has long been a local problem in the Southern California desert, Newsom said in a statement.
“For too long, communities around the Salton Sea have carried the burden of environmental challenges and neglect,” Newsom said in a statement. “Today, California is changing that by launching the Salton Sea Conservancy to advance cleaner air, protect public health, restore critical ecosystems, and ensure the work we’ve started creates lasting opportunities for Salton Sea communities.”
The conservancy board will hold its first meeting in La Quinta on May 14, to plan projects to rehabilitate the sea. Those include replanting native vegetation, increasing the flow of fresh water and creating wildlife habitat along the banks of the Salton Sea.
“The role of the conservancy is first and foremost to oversee the long-term operations and sustainability of the projects that are being built to stabilize the sea itself,” Silvia Paz, a conservancy member and executive director of the community group, Alianza Coachella Valley, told CalMatters. “I’m particularly interested in those projects at the convergence of public health, public access and restorative environment.”
The Salton Sea is nearly twice as salty as the ocean and contaminated by agricultural runoff and other pollutants. It has been shrinking for decades because of decreased water flow. That exposes toxic dust that wafts through the region, causing asthma and other health problems in neighboring communities.
“I would have been underwater in the Salton Sea,” Newsom said in a video while standing on the dusty shore of the sea, where he pointed to the former yacht club hundreds of yards behind him. “You can see how much it's receded.”
But the sea is still a biodiversity hot spot that hosts more than 400 bird species along the Pacific Flyway, one of North America’s main bird migration routes. And its surreal landscape makes it a unique feature in the California desert.
Last year state Sen. Steve Padilla, a Chula Vista Democrat, authored the law that created the conservancy to handle cleanup and restoration of the ailing water body. The state has earmarked about half a billion dollars for that effort.
“Conservancies have a very important role to play in California, and can provide the kind of focused efforts and professional attention needed,” Padilla told CalMatters. “And if there is a place that could benefit from that, it is certainly the Salton Sea.”
Several projects are underway as part of a 2018 Salton Sea Management Program, a 10-year blueprint for building 30,000 acres of wildlife habitat and dust suppression projects.
The largest is the Species Conservation Habitat Project on the south end of the sea. It’s projected to cover 9,400 acres: nearly 15 square miles or enough space to fit more than 7,000 football fields.
Now partially completed, it includes a network of ponds, berms and islands, with water delivery systems to support fish and birds. The restored water features and vegetation are designed to cover the exposed lakebed and suppress dust.
The state is also planting native vegetation on the west side of the sea, to improve habitat and reduce dust, Paz said. Public access and recreation projects are planned at the north end of the sea, she said, including “trails and ways in which the public can access and appreciate the level of investment and the beauty the Salton Sea can provide.”
Paz said the 2018 management plan laid the groundwork for restoration by raising questions about how different agencies could work together on restoring the Salton Sea.
“Now with the conservancy that question is answered, and we’ve already seen momentum with the implementation of these projects, so my hope is there’s been a lot of learning and these projects can move more expeditiously,” she said.
This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.
