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The Great Salt Lake is starting to look like the Salton sea [1] which is considered the largest environmental catastrophe in California history. If this keeps g

The Great Salt Lake is starting to look like the Salton sea [1] which is considered the largest environmental catastrophe in California history. If this keeps going SLC may quickly become unlivable. I still remember the smell in the LA basin when the winds blew from the Sea and it was awful - think that smell around large colonies of seabirds with a tinge of death. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salton_Sea https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salton_Sea

scythe 4y ago
The Salton Sea, however, is unnatural. Before humans interfered, it was just a dry valley. It was never sustainable, regardless of the usage pattern or climate trajectory.
- giraffe_lady 4y ago
  Wasn't it one of the two end-points the colorado used to alternate between? When it was draining that way it was there, and when it flipped every few decades or centuries it wasn't. There's not ever a firm line between "natural" and "after humans interfered" as if those are separate, unrelated and incompatible things. But in this case it is particularly fuzzy.
  - s1artibartfast 4y ago
    I think the switching occured much less frequently, with the lake drawing down and drying in between. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Cahuilla#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Cahuilla#History The lake existed in several stages over the last 2,000 years, periodically drying and refilling and eventually disappearing sometime after 1580. Between 1905 and 1907, due to an engineering accident, the Salton Sea formed in parts of the lower basin of Lake Cahuilla. Were it not for human intervention, the sea might have grown to the size of prehistoric Lake Cahuilla.
  - scythe 4y ago
    When the Colorado flowed into that valley, it also flowed out through the Hardy River, with the exit near Nuevo Leon. The metastable state that existed then inundated most of what is now the Imperial Valley; the city of Mexicali (pop ~1M) would be underwater.
  - hinkley 4y ago
    Like the world's worst case of an oxbow lake I suppose?
friend_and_foe 4y ago
So reading about it I don't really see an environmental catastrophe. The basin has been filled 3 times in the last 1200 years, fills intermittently as the course of the Colorado river changes, and has no outlet which means it's ecology is unstable. It last filled around 1900 which is when it appears the current story began. My reading is that people settled it only to find that it is naturally an unstable environment, and now want to create a "restoration plan" to reduce it's natural instability because of economic dependency on it's continued existence.
- s1artibartfast 4y ago
  The filling in 1900 was due to a manmade accident, which I think could rightly be considered an environmental catastrophe. A poorly designed canal inlet catastrophically failed, diverting the entirety of the Colorado river to the dry lake for two years. It was so much water that it is still drying out. The catastrophe was the filling, not the drying.
  - friend_and_foe 4y ago
    Then why is the restoration projects and various government acts focusing on restoring the water level and salinity?
    - s1artibartfast 4y ago
      Misguided environmental sentiment based on the status quo after the flood but not before? The flood was part of an irrigation project to bring water to the desert. Irrigation of the imperial valley from the Colorado river continues today. For decades after the flood, excess water from farms would trickle into the slowly drying lake, and people got used to it being there. They also got used to the lack of dust from the dry lakebed. Now that it is going back to it's "natural" state, people don't like the prospect.
      - hinkley 4y ago
        Most people who know about John Muir love him... Except for people who have studied any history of the indigenous peoples of California. Then he's a figurehead who tried to erase the natural and cultural history of California in an effort to further his own pastoralist agenda. That's the charitable way to interpret that. Much worse things are said about him. As someone else pointed out with the Salton Sea, Utah doesn't have a monopoly in the west on dumb myopic views on the natural world. And we are really bad with respect to caring about how things were when our grandparents were kids. Or their grandparents. Or the colonists, or the people they displaced.

scythe 4y ago

The Salton Sea, however, is unnatural. Before humans interfered, it was just a dry valley. It was never sustainable, regardless of the usage pattern or climate trajectory.

giraffe_lady 4y ago
Wasn't it one of the two end-points the colorado used to alternate between? When it was draining that way it was there, and when it flipped every few decades or centuries it wasn't. There's not ever a firm line between "natural" and "after humans interfered" as if those are separate, unrelated and incompatible things. But in this case it is particularly fuzzy.
- s1artibartfast 4y ago
  I think the switching occured much less frequently, with the lake drawing down and drying in between. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Cahuilla#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Cahuilla#History The lake existed in several stages over the last 2,000 years, periodically drying and refilling and eventually disappearing sometime after 1580. Between 1905 and 1907, due to an engineering accident, the Salton Sea formed in parts of the lower basin of Lake Cahuilla. Were it not for human intervention, the sea might have grown to the size of prehistoric Lake Cahuilla.
- scythe 4y ago
  When the Colorado flowed into that valley, it also flowed out through the Hardy River, with the exit near Nuevo Leon. The metastable state that existed then inundated most of what is now the Imperial Valley; the city of Mexicali (pop ~1M) would be underwater.
- hinkley 4y ago
  Like the world's worst case of an oxbow lake I suppose?

friend_and_foe 4y ago

So reading about it I don't really see an environmental catastrophe. The basin has been filled 3 times in the last 1200 years, fills intermittently as the course of the Colorado river changes, and has no outlet which means it's ecology is unstable. It last filled around 1900 which is when it appears the current story began. My reading is that people settled it only to find that it is naturally an unstable environment, and now want to create a "restoration plan" to reduce it's natural instability because of economic dependency on it's continued existence.

s1artibartfast 4y ago
The filling in 1900 was due to a manmade accident, which I think could rightly be considered an environmental catastrophe. A poorly designed canal inlet catastrophically failed, diverting the entirety of the Colorado river to the dry lake for two years. It was so much water that it is still drying out. The catastrophe was the filling, not the drying.
- friend_and_foe 4y ago
  Then why is the restoration projects and various government acts focusing on restoring the water level and salinity?
  - s1artibartfast 4y ago
    Misguided environmental sentiment based on the status quo after the flood but not before? The flood was part of an irrigation project to bring water to the desert. Irrigation of the imperial valley from the Colorado river continues today. For decades after the flood, excess water from farms would trickle into the slowly drying lake, and people got used to it being there. They also got used to the lack of dust from the dry lakebed. Now that it is going back to it's "natural" state, people don't like the prospect.
    - hinkley 4y ago
      Most people who know about John Muir love him... Except for people who have studied any history of the indigenous peoples of California. Then he's a figurehead who tried to erase the natural and cultural history of California in an effort to further his own pastoralist agenda. That's the charitable way to interpret that. Much worse things are said about him. As someone else pointed out with the Salton Sea, Utah doesn't have a monopoly in the west on dumb myopic views on the natural world. And we are really bad with respect to caring about how things were when our grandparents were kids. Or their grandparents. Or the colonists, or the people they displaced.