Bombay Beach: The Salton Sea Photographs;

[doisneau]

Location: Bombay Beach, California [the Salton Sea] // Google Maps
See the Gallery / See The Rest of the SeriesTanya and I are trying to get back on our old 'at least once a month' roadtrip schedule, and last week we went to the Salton Sea, which was a huge tourist destination but because of tons of pollution it's now pretty much abandoned. Some

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to the shores

[theratsdream]

Well, "tons of pollution" may be the case now, courtesy of the New River and the 500,000 residents of the city of Mexicali, but the reason the area became deplopulated is due to simple nature.

The Salton Sea is barely 100 years old, created by a flood that washed out the rudimentary irrigation ditches that transported water the 30 miles from the Colorado to the Imperial Valley. When the waters receded, a pristine 50 mile lake stayed, where a prehistoric lakebed once was.

For many years in the middle of the 20th century, Bombay Beach, Salton City, Desert Shores and all those tiny little burned out villages today were thriving resorts - complete with hotels, and celebrity waterskiing tournaments. Dean Martin was a regular.

Around the early 60s, people began to notice that - well - the sea started to stink. Bad. Sulfur was building up, and was combining with the high salinity from evaporating water (it's a desert, after all) to begin to wreak havoc on the ecosystem. Fish Kills followed, resorts closed up.

The only reason the Sea still exists today is because it is fed by agricultural runoff waters from the neighboring Imperial Valley - water that is loaded with pestecide-laden fertilizers - to the tune of a couple million acre feet a year. There's a lot of fear from the people of both the Coachella and Imperial Valleys about what happens when that sea doesn't get any more runoff water..

But we already have an example of that - the Owens Valley, post-LA aqueduct.

Water flows uphill in the West after all. Towards money.

TMR