Latest Salton Sea plan introduced By JONATHAN DALE, Staff Writer
Tuesday, December 11, 2007 10:33 PM PST
JOSELITO VILLERO PHOTO
Salt is amassed on abandoned structures on the shores of Bombay Beach on Tuesday.
BOMBAY BEACH Leo Borunda does not like the direction of the Salton Sea Ecosystem Restoration Program.
“The Salton Sea is a beautiful thing,” the 15-year resident of Bombay Beach said. “It doesn’t need restoration; it needs preservation.”
Members of the state Department of Water Resources’ Colorado River and Salton Sea Office were met with reactions like Borunda’s and some his fellow sea dwellers when updating residents of the Imperial and Coachella valleys this week about the restoration plan. DWR representatives were in Bombay Beach on Tuesday afternoon and in Brawley on Tuesday evening.
Dale Hoffman-Floerke, the chief of the Colorado River and Salton Sea Office, laid out the restoration program’s plan to residents as it was presented to the Legislature in March.
The $8.9 billion plan would call for the divvying up of the sea through a system of barriers, berms and pumps as a means of protecting local birds and fish while still giving people a place for recreation and farmers a spot for irrigation runoff.
“We’ve been working pretty hard over the last three and a half years putting together this information as we look to restore the Salton Sea,” Hoffman-Floerke said. “One of the reasons the state wants to restore the sea is because of the ecological value.
“We know the influx of water from the New River is going to reduce dramatically and have an impact on the sea,” she said. “We have to incorporate how much water is going to be coming in to the sea.”
Hoffman-Floerke said the restoration program’s programmatic environmental impact report would create a 45,000-acre marine sea around the north, east and west banks of the Salton Sea from the San Felipe Creek all the way around to Bombay Beach.
That plan suggests the marine sea, which will be cordoned from the rest of the water by rock barriers, will have an oceanic salinity between 30,000 and 40,000 milligrams per liter and would be formed by 2022.
The rest of the sea would either be a salt-heavy brine sink, 106,000 acres of exposed playa or 62,000 acres of saline habitat complex for the ecosystem.
This plan is still reliant on Senate Bill 187, which would appropriate bond funds for the restoration for the first five years and would appoint a governing structure for the project. The bill failed earlier this fall.
Borunda said the Salton Sea would be negatively affected by such a plan, and said he enjoyed the 150 acres he owns in the area and the five blocks of beach along the sea.
“We don’t need a restoration plan,” Borunda said. “I don’t want to see (the Salton Sea) get chopped up.”
"
Pumping 200,000 acre-feet to the Gulf of California would cost about $10 million per year, which could be partially offset by hydroelectric generation from bringing a like amount of lower salt seawater from the Gulf downhill to the Salton Sea. Even at $10 million per year, this is far less than the debt repayment of $600 million per year that taxpayers would be stuck with on the $8.9 billion fix being proposed. "
Stu wrote on Dec 13, 2007 4:37 PM:
" People, we need to remember that the Salton Sea was the result of a quite recent accident, historically speaking. So why is it sacred now? At least sacred enough to ask Californians to spend billions on it? IF we had the water to spare we could keep it going. But we don't. The only responsible thing to do in the long term is to let nature take its course and let the lake turn into a large salt flat. Sorry, but this is $8.9 billion now that the state does not really have to spend. Then how much more later? Another $10 billion? Then another? Can anyone be serious about using membrane filtration for purification with THIS water? Does anyone know how much Reverse Osmosis membranes cost, how often they'd have to be replaced, how much labor, and especially how much energy we're looking at? This is NOT a viable option! Yes, the romantic dream is hard to get over, but the agony will only be prolonged if we keep insisting upon saving this accidental inland sea. "
ty w. nay wrote on Dec 12, 2007 7:18 PM:
" 106,000 acres of exposed sea bottom would put an end to Westmorland,Niland,Calipatria, and Brawley. I don't think that will work for our valley residents health and welfare, its time for Imperial Valley residents to be heard! "
indigo wrote on Dec 12, 2007 7:09 PM:
" I agree with gymjunkie > leave the sewage in Mexico. If we spent the millions of dollars needed for purification, what would we do with the toxic sediments and fetid byproducts of the purification? "
gymjunkie wrote on Dec 12, 2007 9:38 AM:
" Maybe spend the money diverting New and Alamo rivers back into Mexico where they can have their own dead sea. "
joselopez wrote on Dec 12, 2007 9:14 AM:
" Another example of the government spending billions of dollars on turning an ant hill into a mountain. Logical solution is to correct source of the problem. Installing a water purification plant on the two rivers feeding into the Salton Sea would be hell a lot cheaper, and not distroy the natural ecological features of the Salton Sea. "
jac wrote on Dec 12, 2007 6:02 AM:
" i still remeber going to the salton sea as a young child with my family. calipatria would have a parade with some one crowned king neptune, sometimes a celebrity. i remeber swimming at bombay beach and salton city having boat races and other family activities. i remeber getting my first 20 pound fish, a corvina. i am glad i still rember because most people will never get the opportunity to have those memories. too much politics involved. the salton sea is dead. "
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Warren Fwy wrote on Dec 14, 2007 11:45 AM: