A dangerous fight over water and the Salton Sea

[tflaris]

It’s easy to sympathize with Imperial County officials frustrated over the Salton Sea, once an environmental and recreational wonderland that is now heavily polluted and shrinking, if not dying. The state made a financial commitment a dozen years ago to restore the sea, and has done little since. But the giant Imperial Irrigation District is now playing a dangerous game to force the state’s hand — a game that could cost San Diego County a significant chunk of its drinking water supply and could potentially unravel the landmark “peace on the river” agreements reached in 2003 between all the southwestern states that tap into the Colorado River.

The IID last month filed a petition with the California Water Resources Control Board, asking the agency to launch a “facilitated dialogue” to find funding to restore the sea. The IID has no pretense that the sea will be transformed to its glory days of decades ago, but it hopes to avert what IID calls “an emerging environmental and public health crisis” at the sea. If the funding isn’t found within six months, the IID would then ask the state board to condition further water transfers from Imperial Valley farms to San Diego County and the Coachella Valley on the state meeting its 2003 commitment.

San Diego County currently receives 15 percent of its water supply from those water transfers, a figure scheduled to increase to 24 percent by 2020. Obviously, the loss of that water would be economically devastating.

Kevin Kelley, general manager of the IID, says his agency’s petition was “not an act of provocation.”

But it is hard not to see the petition as in effect holding San Diego and Coachella Valley hostage in punishment for the state’s inaction on restoration of the sea.

Asked about the potential for all of the historic 2003 agreements to unravel should the IID prevail with its petition, Kelley said he was “mindful of the Pandora’s-box argument that ... we may get a bad outcome.”

But he also argued, with some justification, that “it is not responsible to let the sea fester.” He said the state board represents “the last available forum” for the IID and that “somebody has to hold the state to account.”

Time is critical.

In agreements separate from the state mandate to restore the Salton Sea, San Diego County and other agencies since 2003 have been pouring fresh water into the sea to mitigate the water transfers from Imperial Valley farms. This mitigation water was intended to prevent further erosion of the sea’s shoreline and to prevent the sea’s salinity from worsening while the state developed a restoration plan. That mitigation requirement expires in 2017 and, at that point, degradation of the sea would rapidly accelerate.

There is a path forward.

We strongly urge the IID to withdraw its petition. But we also strongly urge Gov. Jerry Brown to take the leadership role in getting the bureaucracy and the Legislature to live up to the state’s financial commitment. A restoration plan developed in 2007, but never implemented, would be hugely expensive, estimated then at $8.9 billion. But that is peanuts compared to the cost and turmoil of continuing to do nothing.

http://m.utsandiego.com/news/2014/de...er-salton-sea/


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[Danseur]

A dry sea bed isn't just loss of the sea; it's the creation of a cancer causing crop killing nightmare with a reach of hundreds of miles when that sea bed gets blown around by the wind.

The problem with arguing about the environment is its usually a question of perspective; Long Term risk vs Short Term gain. We all have differing opinions on this, but the greedy often have no limit on acceptable risk.