One statement, made in the film, that resonated with me is that you only need to visit the Salton Sea once to feel sympathy for the place. When I went out there with my buddy Ransom Riggs, two weeks ago, I was overwhelmed by the death and decay--the smell of rot, the fish carcasses, the abandoned homes. I was convinced that the sea was a toxic wasteland. I read that the sea was filled with sewage overflowing from Mexico, a statement that turns out to not be true.
The Salton Sea was caused by a run off of the Colorado River in 1905. The overflow went to the Salton sink, the deepest part of the Imperial Valley and a major area for salt mining. The largest lake in California quickly became as salty as the ocean. In the 1950s, the sea boomed as a major tourist site. But the combination of the desert (not dessert) heat, which could reach up to 120 degrees in the summer, and the sea's salinity increasing by 1% each year, made it difficult for the fish to breath.
Too much salt! That's what was killing all the fish. All the dead fish created high levels of bacteria and when the birds ate the fish, they began to die, too. The local government decided to diverge the clean water from the Colorado river to LA and San Diego instead of wasting it on the Salton Sea and now the water is receding and animal deaths has increased. Politicians want to forget that the Salton Sea even exists. And scientist predict that if the lake evaporates, it will create a huge alkaline dust storm that will completely blanket and destroy Palm Springs.
The problems with the Salton Sea are not easy to fix. A part of me thinks that we should just let it dry up, because the reason the lake can't survive in that climate is because it was never supposed to be there. It's killing millions of fish and thousands of birds every summer. But then what will happen to Palm Spring? With most of the wetland dried up in California, where will the birds go?
More photos from Ransom Riggs:
