
A Sea Worth Its Salt - sndean
http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/sea-worth-salt/
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pipio21
What about saving the Colorado River instead?

There were magnificent places on it that were totally destroyed. As water
desalination and solar energy gets cheaper it would be great idea to give the
Colorado back its water.

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oinksoft
The Salton Sea is fascinating. Its bed is as low as Badwater Basin in Death
Valley, and were it not inundated, it might be the hottest place in the US. A
little while ago I submitted a fellow's account of hiking its perimeter during
summer:
[http://dineshdesai.info/saltonwalk/](http://dineshdesai.info/saltonwalk/)

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the_watcher
I grew up in La Quinta, just a bit west of the Salton Sea. Thermal, which is a
city between La Quinta and the sea, is tied with Death Valley and the Libyan
Sahara for the highest recorded temperature of all time (or at least was,
while I was growing up). In the Coachella Valley, every summer includes about
a month of 120+ highs, and anyone who has spent more than 3 summers there has
seen 130+ temperatures before. It's just damn hot.

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wrong_variable
Fascinating. The Salton sea could actually provide a lot of productivity, due
to its very low dept, it could be possible to create vast arrays of shaded
crop covers on top like they are doing across Indian rivers with Solar Panels.

Water could be allowed to drain naturally from either the ocean or other
rivers, no need of manual pumps.

You could also build homes on top that due to the surrounding crops and sea
underneath be really cool when it comes to temperature.

Also you have have cool walk-able or (boatable !) paths like in Venice.

A modern day paradise in the middle of the desert.

So much potential

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rtpg
I think the biggest issue is that it _is_ in the middle of the desert. You're
fighting the stable state by trying to make something nice and walkable.

Maybe it would actually be better to "migrate" the Sea over to a cooler area
of the state. We made a lake before, why not do it again?

Seriously though stopping evaporation would be a big win to stop the sea from
disappearing.

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rch
The only way you're going to stop the evaporation in that climate is by moving
the lake underground.

Another comment mentioned fixing the Colorado River - how about expanding that
to include restoration of the entire natural river system throughout the
Western US? In my mind, that's close to the economic scale of what would be
required to keep this artificial sea in the desert from becoming a toxic brine
pit.

For context -- total domestic production of salt in 2015 was 48M tons; there's
~128M tons of salt in a cubic mile of seawater; and about 1.8 cubic miles of
water in the Salton.

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the_watcher
As someone who grew up outside the Salton Sea (La Quinta), this is always
interesting. Every time the real estate speculation market picks up out in the
Coachella Valley, you'll hear people making noises about buying up land out
there.

Also - it wasn't mentioned in the article, but is pretty important to anyone
around there: it smells like rotten eggs. Really strongly. Some mornings in
the Coachella Valley the wind will blow in from that direction and the whole
place will stink until midday

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tavert
It's an interesting sight, seeing remnants of tourism and an ecosystem that
has been decaying for decades. Route 86 by the Salton Sea is the only place
I've ever set cruise control to triple digits (mph) and still been passed by
multiple other cars.

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cjensen
A news report [1] says that it appears the Salton Sea has recently passed the
tipping point and has become too salty for most biology. Tilapia have stopped
breeding in the Salton Sea. Birds which rely on small fish are now absent.
Birds which consume small worms from the seafloor are now dying off.

[1]
[http://www.desertsun.com/story/news/environment/2016/08/09/s...](http://www.desertsun.com/story/news/environment/2016/08/09/salton-
sea-biologists-find-some-birds-dead-missing/88118480/)

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ChuckMcM
This was always the end point and at least one of the environmental papers
that looked at "saving" it stated as much. Its really too bad that harvesting
the salt out of the water isn't economically feasible.

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t0mislav
Great podcast btw, love 99pi!

