Should Tax Money Be Spent…

…to save an ecological disaster from ecological disaster? Kind of an interesting question. The Salton Sea in Southern California was formed in 1905 when the Colorado river flooded. An agricultural dike failed and the resulting flood of water filled what had been up until then the Salton Sink. Since then, agricultural runoff has replenished at least some of the water. Salinity has been increasing steadily in the water and it has become progressively more polluted with all sorts of agricultural chemicals and various other pollutants. Wikipedia has an entry on the Salton Sea here.

The reason this came up is that a new report on alternatives for saving the Salton Sea has just been issued.

After two years of often intense debate and research, state officials have finished an environmental report with ideas for saving the 35-mile long Salton Sea. The lake lies just north of El Centro in Southern California.

The lake and its plant and animal life have been suffering from a drop in water levels and increasing salinity. The Salton Sea is a key North American stopover for several species of migrating birds, including several types of geese and the endangered Yuma Clapper Rail.

The 3,000-page report, prepared by the state departments of water resources and fish and game, is scheduled to be released Thursday.

"We don't have all the answers. There is still a lot of uncertainty out there as far as water quality issues," said Dale Hoffman-Floerke, chief of the Colorado River and Salton Sea office for the Department of Water Resources. "But I think we've done a pretty good job … with the information we have."

Suggestions, called "alternatives" in the report, include projected construction costs that range from $2.3 billion to $5.9 billion.

The alternatives include ways to isolate areas of high salt content to help bolster plant and animal life, fostering habitats along the shoreline and increasing air quality by preventing more of the shoreline from being exposed.

Studies have shown that if nothing is done, the lake could shrink by more than 60 percent in the next 20 years, exposing dusty shoreline in a farming region already plagued by worsening air quality.

"It's a huge public health threat," said Michael Cohen, senior associate with the Pacific Institute, an Oakland-based think tank that has studied the lake. "Obviously we need to protect the birds that rely on the Salton Sea, but certainly people are a critical concern."

The Salton Sea, which stretches across the Imperial and Riverside county line, was created in 1905 when floodwaters broke through a Colorado River irrigation canal.

So what is essentially a man-made accidental creation is now the source of a debate on how much to spend to save it. Granted that it has become something of a boon to wildlife over the past century, the fact is that it did not exist before 1905 and the wildlife did just fine, right? I know this is a very emotional and contentious debate, incidentally. I also know that there are theories that various bodies of water have existed there before. Those have all dried up as time passed. Should the Salton Sea be allowed to go the way of those past bodies of water? Or should a fairly large amount of tax dollars be spent? I don't have the answer.