California’s Salton Sea spewing toxic fumes, creating ghost towns

IMPERIAL COUNTY, CALIF. — The vision for Salton City was clear: A bustling, resort community along the crystal blue waters of the Salton Sea. Residents could enjoy their own boat docks and stroll down palm tree-lined streets to the beach.

The city’s reality is more grim. Instead of a vacation spot, it feels like a post-apocalyptic ghost town. Most of the homes were demolished or never built. The palm trees are stumps. And the sea, while beautiful, is toxic.

“People here used to fish, swim, bring their boats,” said Frank Ruiz, Audubon’s Salton Sea Program Director, as he stood by a crumbling dock on land that once held water. “They went from living in paradise to living in hell.”

Here in the southeastern corner of California, flanked by sprawling mountains and desert, lies the state’s largest and most troubled body of water, along with the mostly abandoned communities near its shore.

The shrinking of the Salton Sea could be a preview of what will happen in other communities across the U.S. West as water supplies become less predictable with climate change. Years of drought have severely depleted reservoirs that feed the Colorado River and looming water cuts could affect millions of people.

The landlocked lake was created in 1905 when an accidental inflow of water from the Colorado River filled a low-lying depression in the desert called the Salton Sink. The lake grew to 400 square miles in just a couple years and remained full because of drainage water from farms mostly in the Imperial Valley.

Tourism and wildlife flourished at the sea in the mid 1900s. During the 20th century, California lost about 95% of its wetlands and inland lakes, which made Salton a critical habitat for millions of migratory birds.

In the 1970s, the lake began to experience rising salinity levels and contamination from agricultural runoff. Now, the lake’s ecosystem is collapsing, and scientists forecast the water could become so salty that only bacteria will be able to survive. In 1999, the sea covered 375 square miles but has since shrunk by more than 45 square miles.

Many of the more than 400 bird species reliant on the sea are dying, and all but one fish species has died off in the sea’s main body of water, according to the National Audubon Society. Former lakebed is turning into exposed playa, which has created a public health hazard for more than 650,000 people.