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| The Salton Sea from North Shore, February 2019, photo credit Jon Nye |
Over
a century ago, eager
workers widened an irrigation canal on the flanks of the Colorado River near
the California-Mexico border. I picture their pleasure watching the water fill
a nearly dry irrigation canal that was built to support a new agricultural
enterprise in arid Southern California. Less than two years later, following a
colossal drought, an epic flood in the Western United States blew the slightly
widened opening all to hell. The entire flow of the Colorado River emptied into
a low point, the Salton Basin, in California instead of its “normal” path to
the Gulf of California.
The
Salton Sea was thus born. Communications in the early 1900s were primitive in
this area, and it took some time before folks in Sacramento or Washington DC
realized something massive was happening that would affect the environment and
settling of this region of the country for years to come. Heroic efforts were
required to plug up the “hole” in the massive river’s levy system. It took over
two years to tame the flow, and by that time the Salton Sea had developed a
life of its own.
The
current Salton Sea—about 100 feet deep at its maximum point—is currently
drawing controversy as regional water districts are taking more and more of the
limited Colorado River discharge that currently supports the Sea’s vast
ecosystem. The Sea is drying up. Today, the salt content of the Sea is about
twice that of seawater and only a couple of fish species (tilapia and desert
pupfish) can survive and reproduce in it. For the hundreds of thousands of
birds that stop at the Sea during the year, the increased salt content (salinity) means that the fish and invertebrates these birds depend on for food
can’t survive much longer. This means these birds will have to find somewhere
else to spend the winter or fatten up before heading further south. There
really isn’t another place of its kind and magnitude for them to go to.
Besides
the fish and birds that are struggling to survive here, the people surrounding
its shorelines have been bypassed by the general economic boom that colors most
of California since 2013. Although this region grows about 30-40% of the US’
supply of winter fruits and vegetables, there aren’t more than one or two
proper grocery stores in the surrounding communities. Essentially it's one big
food desert. Unemployment is high; the people who live there, many of them
undocumented, Native people, or agricultural seasonal folks, suffer from
breathing dust laden with toxic compounds. As the water to the Salton Sea is
diverted to San Diego and LA, the Sea is shrinking exposing its shoreline,
which eventually dries out. The dust is whipped up by ferocious winds off of
the desert. This dust has led to increased incidence of asthma and nosebleeds
in children in the area.
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| Obsidian Hill, Salton Sea, 2019, photo credit Jon Nye |
It's
an environmental crisis of massive proportions. Despite vast
investments of time and State funds over many years, adequate solutions
addressing the full range of problems have not been articulated. To advise the
State on solving the major environmental problems facing the Salton Sea and
surrounding environments, a convergent, scientific and engineering approach
coordinated with policy experts needs to be investigated as funding for
mitigation and restoration plans go forward. I hope to spearhead this effort
with colleagues from University of California Riverside.
California enacted legislation to
provide funding to begin partial restoration of the northern and southern
shorelines of the Salton Sea (Salton Sea Management Plan Phase 1: 10-Year Plan,
March 2017). This plan outlines engineering operations for creating built
habitat for migratory birds, but it is not underpinned by current scientific
knowledge of the Sea’s ecosystem that developed over the past 10-20 years when
the last major studies were conducted and published.
The
University of California is in the unique position of being able to provide
substantial support as California’s environmental crisis at the Salton Sea
unfolds. The State’s proposal to address these environmental, public health and
economic issues is the construction of marshes along the retreating shores of
the Sea, as a means of providing fish and therefore bird habitat, while
simultaneously reducing dust emissions. Although much research was conducted on
the ecology and environmental quality of the Salton Sea prior to its recent
environmental collapse, little research has been directed at the parameters
required to achieve the goals of the 2018 Management Plan (2018).
In 2018,
Proposition 68, passed by California voters, provides $200M to begin these
restoration projects. The Salton Sea Authority’s Management Plan can now start
to be implemented. Although funding for restoration and management is coming on
line, government agencies have yet to provide resources for independent
academic research. The timing is critical for an integrative team to move forward. This is a
golden opportunity for the University.
As the salinity increases, organisms
thriving in the Salton Sea will have to adapt to those capable of living in
extreme environments. Tilapia, the major fish in the Sea, will soon die,
resulting in animal populations based primarily on small invertebrates,
completely altering the current diets of most of the birds found on the lake.
The future of the southern California deserts and this region in particular is
projected to have increased temperatures and lower rainfall.
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| Marilyn holding a dessicated tilapia, photo credit Jon Nye |
Directly north, Palm Desert, Palm
Springs and the other desert cities are home to 350,000 residents who moved
there to enjoy clean desert air and a mild climate. The importance of our
proposed work centers on developing a deeper understanding of how the Salton
Sea system functions, which could provide more sustainable approaches for
mitigating toxic dust risk are implemented, as well as ensure avian populations
continue to have a home in the area. A robust solid science
perspective--essential to the desert communities of California for planning
their future in our warming world--is needed.
Active research is in progress in
the Bridging Regional Ecology, Aerosolized Toxins, and Health Effects (BREATHE)
center, which is a cross-campus interdisciplinary center focusing on air
quality and health effects. The center was created to address general issues of
air quality and health, but there are several collaborative programs focusing
on the health impacts of degraded air quality in the eastern Coachella Valley
by the north shore of the Salton Sea. These studies bring together researchers
from the College of Engineering Center for Environmental Research and
Technology (CE-CERT), the Center for Conservation Biology, the Division of
Biomedical Sciences in the School of Medicine, as well as researchers in the
College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (CHASS). Recently, Dr. David
Lo, Director of BREATHE, testified before the State Assembly Committee on
Water, Parks and Wildlife on the important health impacts of the Salton Sea and
the relevance to the Salton Sea Management Plan.
The proximity of the UC Riverside campus to the Salton
Sea provides unique opportunities for undergraduate classes to visit the Sea on
field trips. Undergraduates will have
the opportunity to study and observe one of the largest restoration and
mitigation projects in the United States; encompassing biological, public
health, air quality and environmental justice issues. This is an extraordinary opportunity for our
students interested in environmental issues to not only view and analyze the
work being carried out, but also to meet with the State and local governmental,
as well as private individuals, who are carrying out the work.
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| UCR students inspecting the shoreline, 2018 |
Come
January 2020, I will be organizing a 6-month study of the outstanding research
questions facing this critical region and how the Salton Sea’s changing
environment might impact people living in the Imperial and Coachella Valley
communities. The study will provide recommendations to managers at state and
federal natural resource agencies, who will be creating research agendas to
complement the current management plan, and California legislators, who will be
developing public policy.
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| Chris (center) educating students and UCR folks about birds, 2019, photo credit Jon Nye |
The
engagement of policy makers and legislators is a completely new venture for me.
The voyage started with my recent PhD student Jon Nye, who enrolled in a
Science-2-Policy certificate program in the spring.
Jon
Nye writes: “My PhD dissertation was about human activities on
ecosystems, but not directly applied to something like a policy outcome. Near
the end of my time as a graduate student I decided I should really do a better
job of reaching out to a public audience.
I saw in my email inbox a new “Science 2 Policy” certificate course at
UCR, that promised to help with science communication and reaching policymakers.
I learned later that this is a first of its kind program to directly engage
grad students with the government, of which the instructors have pointed all
kinds of student led efforts to the right people in the legislative and
executive branches at the state and national levels. Mostly boiling your
science down to KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) and cut out all that jargon to
get at what’s really important.
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| Jon Nye airboat fishing, 2019 |
I didn’t see an easy application of my PhD
work, so I opted for a side project that my Advisor Marilyn Fogel had taken up:
the Salton Sea. It was through this that I learned about some issues I hadn’t
been aware of: the lost fight over water rights resulting in an increase to the
exposed shoreline sediments causing a massive public health crisis due to air
pollution, affecting fish and wildlife on top of significant pollution from
agricultural and sewage runoff. The deeply impoverished region of southeastern
CA, the poorest in the wealthiest state in the union, with a large population
of undocumented people that work the fields of the Imperial Valley (worth over
$2 billion). One of my professors in anthropology described parts of America as
“the 3rd world in the 1st world”. The Salton Sea is one
of them. And importantly, I learned of the public’s distrust of state’s
promises to fix the crisis, which remain unfulfilled. With my advisor Marilyn,
the S2P instructors Susan Hackwood and Doug Brown, and the S2P president
William Ota on board this led to a few efforts at UCR.”
The guru of
the science-2-policy program is Professor Susan Hackwood, an accomplished UC
professor, who engaged--post retirement--to spearhead a program getting UCR’s
graduate students to do something completely different. Susan is a whirlwind
traveling from Santa Barbara to Riverside in her Tesla largely on autopilot.
She formed UCR’s College of Engineering and helped create California’s Science
and Technology Council, based on her experience as a member of the National
Academy of Engineers. She rolled into my office smartly dressed one June
morning. I was immediately impressed and spilled my ideas to her about a
potential Salton Sea study. We struck a deal on the spot. There is no looking
back!
Jon Nye finished his recent presentation at
the American Geophysical Union meeting with:
“Ultimately
science-based policy in the Salton Sea needs to be part of the solution,
working alongside with local businesses and the agricultural industry to
promote public health, a clean environment and a vibrant economy. By educating
scientists on the law-making process, students and researchers will be better
able to communicate with policymakers. In 2020 we plan to publish a finalized
science-based policy memo to send to policymakers in Sacramento. The S2P
certificate program (which I participated in as a student) is planned to take
on new students in Spring 2020. By embedding a student in the Salton Sea Authority we’ll have a way to work with
directly implementing science guided approaches to Salton Sea projects.
Finally, by gaining input from the community we can guide are own research in
helping the people living nearby. From the level of students to senior
professors, we scientists can participate in shaping environmental policy
rather than be bystanders waving from the sidelines. “
Salton
Sea has the best and the worst that California has to offer. I hope that in the
coming decade, we’ll be able to turn the worst parts into something offering
health and prosperity to the people, plants, and animals of region. For more
information go to: https://www.audubon.org/magazine/summer-2016/how-do-we-save-salton-sea
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| Southern Salton Sea, February 2019, photo credit Jon Nye |
