After the most rigorous scientific study ever done on California's most troubled body of water, federal officials Thursday unveiled an environmentally ambitious and costly proposal to save the Salton Sea.
The officials also stressed that contrary to its putrid smell and off-putting look, the sea is not hopelessly polluted and is actually robustly healthy in many ways.
Although the price to save the tea-colored body of water that straddles Imperial and Riverside counties could run more than $1 billion, officials said the sea is vital both for the ecology of the Western United States and the agricultural economy of California.
"This is an area that deserves investment," Acting Deputy U.S. Interior Secretary David Hayes told a Salton Sea symposium in Desert Hot Springs attended by environmentalists, residents, farmers, water district officials and others.
The sea, 35 miles long and 15 miles wide, is a stopover point for millions of migratory birds along the Pacific Flyway. It serves as an agricultural sump and a fishing and boating spot.
The save-the-sea strategy involves several immediate plans of attack, including cleaning up the dead fish that ring the shore, harvesting fish to reduce overpopulation, continuing to study bird die-offs and enhancing recreation.
A pilot program would reduce the rising salinity by a technique using evaporation. Water from the sea would be sprayed into collection basins, the salt would settle to the bottom and then it could be carted off to landfills, at least in theory.
The immediate programs, costing several million dollars, will be financed by money appropriated by Congress in 1998. Longer-range alternatives will be submitted to a 90-day public review before one or more of those alternatives is submitted to Congress for funding.
Among those alternatives are building dikes and large-scale evaporation ponds and digging a trench to take salty water from the Salton Sea to a dry lake in Mexico.
Tom Veysey, Imperial County supervisor and president of the bi-county Salton Sea Authority, said the drive to cleanse the Salton Sea is, at long last, moving from "planning for restoration to actually beginning restoration."
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said the proposal signals "a breakthrough day for the Salton Sea. At last there is agreement that we must save the sea. To do nothing is to condemn a body of water twice as big as Lake Tahoe to putrefy."
