Dr Lucia Levers is an environmental scientist and economist at the Water Resources Center at the University of Minnesota. Although solutions for the Salton Sea appear daunting and extremely expensive, the panel gave stakeholders the opportunity to review two practical small-scale projects designed to help maintain habitat for waterfowl and other birds. After 15 years of delays and broken promises, California is far behind on plans for heading off a costly environmental disaster. These values include no land costs. Its intent, in the words of then executive director, Tom Kirk, was to “direct and coordinate actions related to improvement of water quality, stabilization of water … The region has hosted vast amounts of water in different forms over the years. The Salton Sea is Highly Saline, Gradually Shrinking. Worldwide, irrigated agriculture accounts for two-thirds of freshwater withdrawals. Add 110°F temperatures and 90% humidity and you have the perfect recipe for stink-soup. An alternative option is to pay growers to allow more Colorado River water to flow to the Sea: growers would be paid for unused water by fallowing fields, by using more efficient irrigation methods, or by using less water in whatever way they deemed best (fallowing, irrigation improvements, deficit irrigation or a combination of the three). But ultimately the $8.9-billion plan failed, too. United States Bureau of Reclamation (2019). Under the authority of the state legislature (AB 71), and in cooperation with the California Natural Resources Agency, the Salton Sea Authority has produced a Financial Feasibility Action Plan. Copyright 2017 © The Salton Sea Authority, Restoring Sea Access via North Shore Beach and Yacht Club, SB 272 Section 6270.5 Enterprise System Catalog, Meet a short-term goal of 9,000 acres to 12,000 acres of habitat and dust suppression projects, and. Greater Palm Springs Convention and Visitors Bureau commissioned the highly respected Tourism Economics firm of Oxford, England to analyze potential economic impacts of two improvement scenarios at the Salton Sea. But the leading contender for a fix may prove to be only a short-term solution. The FFAP is a living document providing a blueprint to create a smaller but sustainable sea in a manner that is realistic, feasible, affordable, and achievable. Lucia Levers, University of Minnesota, US. This plan would take years to become viable, even if implemented today. Wilson J (2019). Flows into the Salton Sea have declined in recent years, and the result is a shrinking, increasingly saline lake. The most expensive and comprehensive of these suggested re-engineering the shape and size of the Sea, allowing it to be sustained with lower flows. Burgeoning cities express ever more interest in shifting water away from agriculture and towards urban uses. Construct water treatment plants powered by existing "Renewable Energy" sources (Geothermal, Solar & Wind) to provide both clean sea water as well as desalinated water to the Salton Sea. The emphasis on expediency is particularly ironic, as two years has already passed since Secretary Wilcox’s statement. Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr.’s Salton Sea Task Force, created in May 2015, has directed agencies to develop a comprehensive management plan for the Sea that will: The Financial Feasibility Action Plan serves as the foundation for the State’s comprehensive Salton Sea Management Program. 19STCP01376. The mighty Colorado has continued to sustain agriculture, providing irrigation for over 5 million acres annually in the US5, while allowing only a fraction of its flow to reach its historical destination—the Sea of Cortés (Gulf of California). Managing California ’ s Water From. Now, with no more mitigation water, the decline has hastened. It is important to emphasize that we did not estimate the transaction costs associated with either option. Without an expensive reshaping, or even with, a central and controversial issue is from where the water is going to come from to maintain the Sea. For less water, but still a substantial amount and closer to recent flows (1 million acre-feet), importing water from México would cost between $US3.3 and $US6.7 billion initially plus $US6 to $US21 million per year. Property values and recreation are decreasing. USGS (2018). Metz S (2018). The Salton Sea Authority is a Joint Powers Authority (JPA) empowered to revitalize the Salton Sea in consultation and cooperation with state and federal governments. Population growth, drought, and climate change have led to increasing tension among agricultural, municipal, and environmental users of water in many regions. Such agreements, along with their implementation, can take significant amounts of time, and can be quite contentious, often requiring the federal government (ie, the QSA) and/or the court system’s intervention. Imperial Irrigation District wants $200M for Salton Sea in exchange for Colorado River drought plan OK. Petitioner Imperial Irrigation District’s Opening Brief in Support of Petition for Writ of Mandate (2020). (760) 399-5955. The 10-year Phase I Plan will guide early investments at the Salton Sea to protect public health and ecosystem wealth as the Sea recedes and meet goals set forth by the Governor’s Salton Sea Task Force and the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) executed on August 31, 2016, and amended on January 18, 2017 by the Department of Interior (DOI) and the California Natural Resource Agency (CNRA). U.S. Several proposals to ‘fix’ the sea are being considered. In the context of shrinking wetland habitats, the Salton Sea has become a critical habitat for migratory birds to stop and rest during their annual journeys. The challenges of water governance in the 21st century, Lucia Levers, University of Minnesota, US. Responding to growing public pressure to restore the Salton Sea, a multiagency government committee was created in 1993 known as the Salton Sea Authority to initiate, aid, and oversee restoration efforts. For equivalent water flows, we estimated both the pipeline construction costs over the almost 300 kilometer distance between the two Seas (using values provided to the State of California) and the costs to generate equivalent flows from agricultural users, using the hydrologic-economic model developed in our earlier work11. Hanak E, Lund J, Dinar A, Gray B, Howitt R (2011). Another source of the aroma at Salton Sea is the hydrogen sulfide gas that brews in the mud at the bottom of the lake. However, they were not expecting California’s largest urban water user, Los Angeles’s Metropolitan Water District, to bypass the Imperial Irrigation District’s objection by agreeing to provide the Imperial Irrigation District’s share of water if needed. With a PhD and Master’s degree in Environmental Sciences from University of California, Riverside and a Bachelor’s degree in Human Biology from Stanford University, she incorporates natural resource, ecological, and environmental economics into interdisciplinary research projects. The one hold out of this plan? However, the damages to the Salton Sea habitat and the health of the vulnerable population residing in the region require immediate attention. State of the Salton Sea—A science and monitoring meeting of scientists for the Salton Sea. The main cause for optimism is a 10-year, $380 million plan by California to address the Salton Sea crisis. Why buying water from farmers to save rivers makes sense (and why we’re NOT doing it in the Basin), https://pubs.er.usgs.gov/publication/sir20185049, http://www.ppic.org/content/pubs/report/R_211EHR.pdf, http://ca.audubon.org/conservation/conservation/important-bird-areas/salton-sea?page=1, https://www.fws.gov/saltonsea/endangered species.html, https://www.sdcwa.org/sites/default/files/files/QSA_final.pdf, https://www.desertsun.com/story/news/2019/01/31/california-imperial-irrigation-district-200-million-dollar-salton-sea-colorado-river-drought-plan/2733780002/, https://www.iid.com/home/showdocument?id=18610, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/21/the-lost-river-mexicans-fight-for-mighty-waterway-taken-by-the-us, https://www.desertsun.com/story/news/politics/2018/04/16/ten-questions-eleven-proposals-save-salton-sea/516602002/. Sulfide gas that brews in the near future US28 million per year but are such proposals of. 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