A Walk Around The Entire Salton Sea In Summer Temperatures of 120F

b [Music] [Music] water is the driving force of all nature unfortunately for our planet we're running out and the world's lakes are disappearing all around the globe climate change and human activity threaten their very existence and the future of the world's ecosystem in america california's salton sea is drying up and we're facing what could become the worst ecological disaster of our generation if it dries up it's going to be a catastrophe it could be as much as 100 tons of dust fine particulate dust that could become airborne every day it's just a wall of dust just coming into your populated areas 75 foot 100 foot looks like tidal waves of sand they're so tiny that if you breathe these particles in they'll perfuse directly into your bloodstream through your lungs and attached to these particles are chemicals cadmium arsenic selenium toxins that do remain neutral if they're wet you could go in the water a lot of people catch the fish the animals are fine but if those become airborne people get really sick if we expose 140 square miles we'll have air pollution the worst in the world it's the largest lake in california and most people have no idea about what will happen to it if it's allowed to dry up so my goal became to make people aware for this place that i love that was just dying right in front of me and dying right in front of everybody and nobody seemed to care seeing more and more how it had changed from the time i used to come as i was a kid seeing all the businesses that had closed seeing the condition of the the economy the local economy and my initial impression was just wow i almost in a way grew up here for several years of my childhood and teenage years my parents and i my brother and my sister we'd go fishing come home with hundreds of fish every weekend other than being hot it was a great place to be where we used to camp the water had receded hundreds of yards i did a little research and found that nobody had actually walked around the shoreline i started making this a way to get attention for salton sea i knew that the temperature in summertime could reach upwards of 120 degrees the humidity levels at the shoreline when it's that hot is extreme there's a heat index of over 150 degrees i knew that that would be a challenge i didn't know about things like the mud and the quicksand and crossing through the water and blisters and things that i would encounter i didn't even know about any of that yet i just for me the challenge was the heat and the distance it wasn't real yet until i came down here it was right outside the yacht club and i was just checking out the shoreline and this woman and son were visiting i asked her if she'd ever been here before she said no i told her i used to come camping down here all the time and i just said you know what i'm gonna walk around this lake i'm gonna be the first person to walk around this lake and from that moment on it became real planning and training consisted of me walking and mapping out the entire shoreline and i wanted to walk every inch of that shoreline a few miles at a time so that i knew at any given spot what i would have to deal with was there mud here did i have to cross a river or whatever so i wanted to be completely familiar with the shoreline so over the course of a year my plan was to to come down and walk a specific section mark it off on my map which was in in my office of the big map of the salton sea marked that section off until i had mapped out the entire uh shoreline and i wanted to do as much of that in summer and during the heat as possible so that i was also acclimating myself to the weather as i started realizing the scope of what it meant it wasn't just a hike that i really started to question was this possible can i do this and every time i started thinking ahead and thinking of all the things that could go wrong all the things i had to do i would have doubts in the back of my mind saying you can't do this you shouldn't do this to kind of counter those negative thoughts i would tell more people the more public i made it and the more people that knew about it the more difficult it was for me to just give up like so many other things i've done in my life the reason i started to do this the reason i came up with the whole idea it was all a way that i could make a difference positively for salton sea as day one got closer the night before and as i was realizing that everything that i had been living for the last year was all coming to a head now i started getting i was anxious i was i was scared i didn't know i guess my biggest fear was failure there was the real possibility that failure meant death miles from where anybody would be to help me heat stroke heat exhaustion drowning in one of the rivers failure meant that i would be dead and that scared me and it pushed me just to let people know what's happening to salton sea walking up to the starting line i was i was excited and i was i was happy that it was that we were starting but i was i was scared i had done every section of beach in the previous year bit by bit mile by mile but i had never up to that point i had still never walked more than 15 miles or 18 miles in one day much less 20 miles a day for six days in a row so i still didn't know physically if i would be able to do it i was confident that i would but i had never done it i had never done any of those in the expected temperatures and i was i was worried about failure i was worried about getting stuck in mud i was worried about all the things that i had grown to become afraid of or all the challenges that i knew i would be facing over the previous year so i was i was excited and uh concerned at the same time [Applause] so i started the walk at the north shore yacht club right at the flagpole we had a big group six in the morning to see me off it was a lot of energy it was really exciting feet are feeling good my legs are feeling good it's not hot today i don't think we could have asked for better better weather it's a little cold and windy that's actually a blessing uh i don't think the temperature broke 80 degrees it's a bit humid but it's made it for a nice easy walk so far today i don't have to deal with dehydration or anything like that with the 100 plus degree temperatures my legs feel great so far it's gone according to plan on schedule i'm actually a bit ahead of schedule so day one is looking pretty good came through here just almost exactly a year ago and just a mile or so down the beach looking at some of the other stranded boats that were underwater a year ago and now they're 100 yards 50 yards from the from where the water is so the in the last year the water has drastically dropped that's just amazing to me how quickly the water is receding if the rate that it's dropped in the last year continues or if it accelerates like they say it's going to starting in 2017. i can't even imagine what it looked like the section of beach from corvina beach which was just a few miles south of the starting point is where i had walked dozens if not hundreds of times as a kid a little uh two or three mile section because as a kid out here uh when i got bored i would walk and i guess looking back that's probably where some of the inspiration came from and i i didn't actually realize that until later walking southward 15 18 miles or so to bombay beach there was a group of people waiting for me there a little event to get together for some of the followers at the ski in bombay beach we'll have some lunch there cool off and continue down to nylon marina another four five miles down the beach finish the day at 22 miles it's a place where people live and we need to save it because if they let the lake dry up people won't be able to live here and that includes imperial county imperial valley coachella valley palm springs you can't imminent domain a quarter of southern california things like asthma emphysema lung cancer heart disease it affects your entire body because these are very fine particles and once airborne these particles can travel hundreds of miles so it's not just a local problem this is a southwestern united states problem it is a very in broad interstate problem it's going to be impacting people that live in phoenix it's going to be it's a bi-national problem it'll be impacting the million or so people that live in mexicali in the state of california we have the number one asthma rate for adolescents and children we have 432 students grades 7-12 and as far as their you know i'm really concerned about their health uh i've seen in the past just in the past five years an increase in the number of health related absences health related notes uh you know again without necessarily showing you all the the private information we we do have an uh a rise in the number of students who who carry an inhaler who have a registered inhaler here who have asthmatic issues every day we got students sitting here in the office saying i just need a breather you know literally because they're having a hard time coping with with the particulates so here's some of our inhalers that we have registered keep in mind this is a school of 430 students so you can probably see about 10 15 of them registered i found that only one in 10 students registers their inhaler with us i see him walking around the reason why they don't register is because if they have an asthma attack somebody has to come all the way over here get their inhaler they don't want to run that risk and so only a very few register but this is this is a snapshot of what happens if there's one thing we can learn from history we can look to owens lake in central california the water was transferred away and it created the largest dust storms in north america at that time we've seen a similar problem on a slightly smaller scale at owens lake is already 2.4 billion dollars and counting and we don't want to see that at the salton sea but we've actually measured those same sediments coming from owens dry lake have been measured as far south as riverside county or as far east as arizona so we know that these particles can once they're up there they can travel very long distances day two started at nyland marina is planned to end at the alamo river which is the second largest river that goes into salton sea the first of a few big obstacles that i'd be facing uh which i was going to have to walk through and that was worrisome because there's mud in the rivers and around the rivers if i were to fall in the mud and have my hands go into the mud it could have ended right there i was more worried about sinking in the mud and getting stuck in the mud and dying as others have it's uh day number two around uh 6 30 in the morning getting ready to start from nyla marina all the way down to uh just before the river got one river to cross today that always makes me a little bit nervous we went out in rain and clouds and woke up this morning and it's clear sun is out it's not a cloud in the sky the water is like glass it's going to warm up today so it'll be more of what i'm used to walking through probably only about 75 or 80 degrees but it should get up to at least 100 degrees and it'll probably be pretty humid so looking forward to a good day the heat's starting to come on it's going to get tougher as the sun gets hotter my thermometer says it just hit 100. i had to get the cover out and put it on because i could really feel it heating up on my head it's a little humid but you can feel that sun burning right through what little hair i've got left the alamo river was surrounded in in mud more like quicksand and for the first time it it brought me to a stop i got stuck in the mud and it it nearly ended the walk i went through plan a and plan b and plan c and plan d and i was really starting to get concerned that was one of the tougher spots and one of the most dangerous areas the further up toward the desert the deeper it is further down toward the sea the muddier it is so i have to find a spot that's a good compromise between mud and sand and depth hopefully there's not a deep drop off channel and this is very difficult to walk through but i've almost twisted my ankle a few times if you can see off in the distance the steam coming out of those buildings those are geothermal power plants and a lot of people don't know that there's more geothermal power right down here in this southern section of salton sea than anywhere in california possibly the united states a lot of geothermal power potential down here so we just need to take advantage of it a lot of energy there a couple of different areas of known mud pots around salton sea and they're both a couple of miles from here i don't want to get too close because the ground is unstable i have a friend over at some of the other mud pots not far from here actually fell through the surface and fell in and got severely burned so the ground is unstable it's it's muddy and it's just very thin and you can just pop through the crust and drop right in so i would love to go poke my stick stick in there or put my hand in to see how hot it is but uh i'm not going to but this is just another one of those amazing things that i come across as i'm walking around out here can't thank you enough partner oh thank you been coming here 50 years oh cool hopefully get some and you're the first one that's done anything you're doing a hell of a job thank you risking your life this is very treacherous out here yeah and uh later in the week when it gets warm when it gets really warm yeah congratulations you're really gonna yeah you're here thank you very much thank you you're welcome let's save the series save rc really great yeah there's individuals taking his life is in the hands right now the weather we're over 100 degrees and he's bringing attention to the salton sea it's phenomenal i've been here over 50 years and never seen it this bad and this gentleman is going to bring attention to our plight he's risking his life far as i'm concerned red hill marina and the entire area are one of my favorite places at salton sea the extinct volcano beautiful red hills that is called red hill the mud pots mullet island sticking up out of the middle of nowhere it's a really interesting place walking through seeing the old dried up boat dock starting to waste away hundreds of yards from any water made me think of how great it probably once was and seeing the shoreline covered in dead fish was bizarre there's a misconception that the fish are dying because of there's some sort of toxicity in the water but in fact the sea is not polluted at all our our studies have shown that if you just took the salt out of that and all the nitrates and fertilizer runoff that's in there you could drink this it meets clean water drinking act safe drinking water act standards for chemical constituents the problem is not that it's polluted but it's too nutrient-rich from fertilizer runoff and this causes algae blooms lots of sunlight lots of nitrates and phosphates from the fertilizer causes huge algae blooms when this algae decomposes actually sucks the oxygen out of the water and fish die by the millions they suffocate most of the fish kills are from uh lack of oxygen in the water due to the massive amounts of algae it's not polluted it's too alive the amount of bird life at salton sea is incredible nowhere ever have i seen so many birds in such a relatively small area in some places the entire shoreline was covered in birds and as i walked through they would all take to flight and they would almost blot out the sky in some cases because there were so many birds on any given day of the year we'll see a hundred thousand more or less birds in and on the shoreline of the salton sea on any given day we can say confidently millions the number that we've documented out here which is 424 bird species it's a very important obviously a very important area for birds the salton sea provides a good reliable habitat year in and year out in california we have lost 95 of our wetlands this is the last place where over 400 species of birds live so this is the last outpost for birds in california the number one issue is uh water quality salinity is projected to really start increasing after 2017. the ability for the salton sea to sustain aquatic life is the issue that we're now facing that we need to find a solution for this is an ecological disaster that it'll affect this this high school and this uh this community obviously but it has further reaching implications than anything that you will see here the pacific flyway is valuable not just to uh california salt sea yet the birds nesting there over the winter come from and return to central america and as far north as canada so there are international issues at stake here as well it affects ecosystems across the entire hemisphere there's nowhere else for the birds to go [Music] one of the strange things about walking around the shoreline and the entire area in general is the amount of agriculture the amount of farms the number of huge open green fields out in the middle of the desert where you would least expect it when temperatures are 110 115 degrees and seeing miles of green fields is just amazing the entire northern section and the entire southern section are almost completely surrounded with agriculture these farms are one of the only things keeping the economy alive in the area if the farms go i don't know what will happen to the economy agriculture in the valley is a is a huge economic engine in the billions of dollars every year ag industry in imperial valley is the big driver valued at around one to two billion dollars a year in total total revenues this is one of the richest farm areas in certainly in california so this is incredibly important as an agricultural production area agriculture is the number one industry here in imperial county and around the sea is some of the most fertile nutrient ground there is growing vegetables it is the bread basket for winter produce for most of the united states the water body is a climate moderator it'll make a two to five degree difference in temperature in the winter which sometimes means the difference between frost damage and no frost damage if you think about putting salt on a leaf product like like lettuce head lettuce or something it would decimate it would ruin it most of the playa has got a salt content that's pretty high and it's got selenium content and other a little arsenic in places on that on crops is very damaging even just a dust on crops is very damaging so both of those issues are paramount to the agricultural industry down here we would see an increase in cost for produce across the nation especially in winter months when we rely on that if the farmers can't farm their vegetables food prices all over the country would rise such a large percentage of agriculture comes from the area the whole united states would be impacted by price increases the new river is one of the most polluted rivers in the united states not with trash and the sort of things you would expect to see but with chemical pollution and potential sewage pollution i got a little in my mouth as i went was crossing that was unexpected not planned for but the other issue was that if i had any cuts or scratches on my legs or anywhere i didn't want any of that water to get in and get a potential infection because just a little infection in a blister or cut or scratch could really uh endanger the wok it's hot today 102 or so it's humid i can feel the heat radiating off the ground so i'm getting it from both sides the top and the bottom i just can't think straight so i'm starting to feel the challenge the challenge that i so craved i'm feeling it now one of the things that really surprised me was the amount of community support and the amount of people that were really coming out to support me more and more people started coming out i'd see more and more people along the route driving and walking with me and waving and honking we had to get together on po road that's a remote area it's difficult to get to there's nothing there for miles and a couple dozen people or so came to support me as my walk progressed that way day three po road uh 10 miles in uh yeah i ran into a problem with the mud over by the new river but up to my thighs that was tough tough stretch most of my mind was was blank and just solely focused on getting through that day every time i looked at the day as a 20-mile day it kind of got overwhelming when i looked at the walk as 102 mile walk which it ended up being it got overwhelming and i just i would all i would think about was all the ways to fail all the places to get stuck all the things that could go wrong one of my biggest concerns was that i wouldn't be able to finish the walk because of of a huge blister or an infected blister or something like that and this has been my big worry has been blisters so uh see how we end up dealing with this going forward so it was around this point that i realized that i was on a timeline i had to get the word out before 2018 all because of the qsa the the quantification settlement agreement is this somewhat convoluted i've called it a shell game where we're moving the cups around as if there's water under them but really there's not they are arguing over allocations of of water in the colorado river based on high flow years in the 1960s and 70s and that water is not there we don't have that much water in the river all of the salt and sea water today is most is almost all coming from the colorado river which is over allocated and we all know the river itself is in a record drought water levels are record lows behind lake powell and others along the river and frankly i just don't think that we can rely on the colorado river as a sustainable water supply for the sea but basically the supreme court established that each of the lower basin states of the colorado river all have rights to certain shares of amounts of water in the river california's share under that law is 4.4 million acre feet a year california's been taking much more than that or somewhat more than that for decades because we could we had the aqua ducks and the infrastructure to physically take those withdrawals this was fine until the other states also developed the infrastructure to take their shares and then they sued california for hogging the water and the result was the quantification settlement agreement which says okay california you've gotta systematically reduce your draw down to your 4.4 million acre feet in order to do this california decided to divert remaining flows sustaining the sea to make up for the loss of water from the qsa this means that by the end of 2017 we will see a drastic reduction in the amount of water flowing into the sea the amount of water draining from the imperial valley primarily will be reduced by 20 000 acre feet per year cumulatively for 15 years for a total reduction of inflow of 300 000 acre feet from 1.3 million acre feet today so that's about one-fourth of the total inflow will be reduced now one of the features about the salton sea 370 square miles yet it's only 50 some feet deep that's like a football field with one inch of water in it so it renders it very sensitive to even slight changes of inflow have huge consequences of where the seashore is and how it retracts we've modeled the lake bed exposures resulting from a 300 000 acre foot reduction of inflow to expose on the order of 60 000 acres that's about 90 square miles that would make the salinity spike really quick the fish would die the birds would have no no food the dust would come quickly and the dust storms that come here are mammoth if we transfer all the water away from the salton sea and we don't have a new water source in mind and lined up it will dry up i'm at the start of day number four uh which is going to be the halfway point actually should be coming up on the halfway point pretty soon i'm walking through the abandoned navy base at salton sea which was pretty active in the 1940s they did testing of atomic bomb shapes as part of the manhattan project and then they did live fire testing and quite a few interesting things here up through the 80s and very early 90s until they just could no longer deal with the flooding one thing that they didn't fully walk away from though was the leftovers from all of the the live fire training that they did and so they have these nice reminders that if you see something interesting on the ground don't pick it up and don't start playing with it because it could explode in your face those signs are all over the perimeter of the property i'm always a little concerned about walking through here you know the fear is accidentally stepping on a land mine or something buried that's not going to be good that keeps me on my toes coming through this area [Music] i'm walking through a uh what was once a set of nice marinas in salton city and as you can see now it's completely dry 10 years ago i'd be six feet under water right now so somebody asked me how i keep track of my hydration and of course i only have one kidney i was born with one kidney so i have to be extra careful of dehydration because i don't have the same kidney function of a normal person so hydration is important but on the other hand over hydration can be a problem also especially when it's humid and i'm sweating out all of the salts you drink too much water sweat out all the electrolytes and salts and your body will shut down that'll kill you as easy as uh as dehydration if not easier so in addition to worrying about dehydration i have to worry about over hydration if you can see down there is what's remains of the marina there's a boat stranded there so that's how much the salton sea has changed and obviously this is just amazing to me i can't imagine how much water it would take to fill up this whole area it's getting hot it was a predicted high of 107 today my thermometer is reading 106. and i'm starting to feel it today i've grew some blisters just in the last few miles on my feet i'm feeling the sun burning my legs so uh yeah it's not fun anymore when i first started planning this walk around salton sea the owner of this property called rancho la playa donated to me to use it and it was a great place 150 acres from highway 86 all the way out to the salton sea and he passed away sadly just a few months ago and since that has happened it's just falling apart and i don't know if you can see but this pier that that owner leo built by his own hand and this used to be where the water was he used to be able to walk out into the water here and now you can see the water is way out there several hundred yards away so where i'm standing now this would have been underwater just a few years ago and now water's way down there [Music] we had a lunch get together at the community center and uh the turnout there was amazing uh dozens if not a hundred people uh reporters npr was there i did a couple of interviews we it was one of the great memories i have one of the few memories i have but what i really remember is that i was shocked at the amount of people that came out just to support me that night we had a uh dinner at johnson's landing in salton city and uh the turnout there was totally amazing it was the place was packed you couldn't fit more people in i didn't get there until a little late and a lot of people had had already left and had come and gone because it was too full [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] i got up and i talked to the crowd and uh kind of surprised myself because that's something that just a year or so before i would have been too shy or too nervous to do well thank you thank you but all i felt like everybody there was there to help support me and i just i felt so comfortable standing up in front of everybody and just talking to them like if i knew them all and in a way i did because we all love salton sea all those people live there all those people have a lot more at stake by losing the salton sea than i do the emotion that i felt from them was another thing that really shocked me just the the overall support of the crowd one of the reasons i wanted to start raising awareness because i had no idea i loved the place as a kid and i had no idea i was totally ignorant of when it happened in the last 30 years and where it was so you guys have lived here do you live here now you live here for years obviously you love this place do you guys love this place [Applause] would you guys would it make you happy if we were able to save the scene yeah that would be a good thing not just for you not just for the economy for the people that will get the dust if the sea dries up so for the whole area that would be a good thing yes is that right [Music] [Applause] is the more you love solvency and the more you want to save salt and seed the louder you see it all right so i'm going to count to three and we're going to do the loudest city of our scene on camera so that we can share with the world there you go all right all right on three one two three so how do we fix salton sea salt and sea needs water it needs fresh water or sea water the state of california needed to start fixing salton sea ten years ago projects being proposed today are 10 years too late there's a whole whole host of proposals out there and options out there but which one fits which one can easily be done and maintained we want this to be developed in a way where it enhances the environment and stabilizes the ecology we need to bring the state local government and the federal government together to come up with an economic plan to fix the vitalization of the seed the right way the first time make sure that it's turned into the sea it should be and was always supposed to be after it was built whether it's renewable energy or wetlands the habitat development we want to develop a take up an approach that is symbiotic one development helps and reinforces the other in other words we want multiple benefits currently there are some great wetlands being created measures to restore the wetlands around red hill 600 acres can be restored there uh habitat for wading birds covering up one of the largest areas of playa that's been recently exposed from a water quality standpoint it'll be an improved salt and sea habitat what you're doing is by shallow flooding and having these cells you're also able to cover the playa so you're taking care of the air quality on that subsection or that cell and then the hope is that these cells could be expanded as the sea recedes so you can keep building additional cells as you go around the sea when it starts exposing so i think from that standpoint it's great all this comes back to dollars with that being said these early start programs are important but they are mere band-aids it's great for the wildlife it'll help keep the dust down it's just too little a few hundred acres one percent or 0.1 of the wetlands needed to prevent the dust storms to prevent the problems it's just too little too late the only reliable alternative then is a c2c alternative either through pipelines or through a canal lock lift system like the panama canal some sort of connection to the open ocean the sea of cortez lies about a hundred little more than 100 miles south of the salton sea and it is connected to the pacific ocean in other words all the water in the world lies 100 miles away and it happens to be a natural river channel we believe that the new river has the capacity to bring ocean water from mexico to the salton sea and in a quantity enough if you use both the new river and the alamo to stop the salton sea from going down naturally letting it flow through those two creeks into the salton sea would be the best avenue bring in extra water desalinate that and provide that to local communities on top of the water that you need to sustain the level of the salton sea solve the dust issue and solve the water crisis in one blow desalinating the water and making it viable drinking water so the state of california can utilize it the country of mexico can utilize it it's naturally flowing to us now as it is and if it's fresh desalinated water it won't have an effect on our regular drinking water this is a tremendous asset this is an area on the planet earth where ocean water will flow by gravity salton sea is 230 feet below sea level in between there's a dry lake bed in between here there's a dry canal called the coyote canal leading almost halfway from the sea of cortez to the salton sea we'd essentially expand this canal to handle our 1.5 million acre feet on the mexico side and then we'd excavate a 35 by 20 foot deep canal for 45 miles through imperial county that's a gravity-fed no-pump canal at approximately 900 million gallons a day from an engineering standpoint you're just putting a straw from a higher pine to a lower one one of the strategies we often suggest to everyone is that you take the salton sea and you separate it into more manageable parts you know an environmental part for the wetlands and the existing projects that are running now like red hill bay or the backbone which are all important viable projects and then a water desalination filtration component to make the water usable for the fish and then a dust management or dust elimination component which is what c to c is and c to c just simply importing approximately 1.5 million acre feet to raise the lake level where there is no exposed ply and there is no dust that just kills dust but the filtration decel guys need to do their part to make the water quality better and the existing environment projects are critical for the pacific flyway so we really need four or five components working in harmony to fix the salt sea it would be a huge undertaking probably along the lines of a panama canal sized project but i think if you do the math of not doing it or not doing anything and allowing the dust storms allowing the toxic dust allowing the people to get sick allowing the people to die and then look at the cost of cleaning all that up after the fact some studies have already shown that it would be far less expensive to do something like a c to c project than it would be to clean up the aftermath of a huge ecological and health disaster it would be expensive but i think it would be worth every penny and it would pay itself back in the long term this has huge potential benefits for mexico they could turn the laguna salada playa into a riviera of their own which would be enormous for jobs and for the economic welfare of mexicali and that region so the basin is comprised of eight ranches on the west side one large property on the east side those property owners are very much in favor of this project and helping the united states with our dust problem at the salton sea los angeles is so the economic development component of our project you know what's in it for the locals what's in it for mexico is that we'll hire them to run our project down here we'll support their farming operations we'll buy products from them so we'll take approximately 000 acres of dusty land cover it with water and wetlands and that will reduce dust in the in the region establish is we can not just save the sea we can create jobs we're talking about high-tech engineering jobs and energy jobs so this would be an economic boon for the entire region this could be the job experience that that gets this country back on the run you're building now for things that are going to happen in the future turn it into an economic engine for solar panels for algae control for farming for geothermal and then overall development by building houses and recreational uses for that sea and turn it into a vital part of the economy of southern california a restored sea is worth billions just in and of itself in increased property values better human health values fish and wildlife values as opposed to a dead sea the estimates today are in the oh probably 10 billion dollar market valuation increase just by adding water just by fixing the water and just by taking care of the environment so day six i knew was gonna be a more difficult day going through what i like to affectionately call death beach which is one of the areas where the barnacle shells are the most deep and the most difficult to walk through so i know it would be a long trudging day and as i got about eight or ten miles away and i could see the yacht club in the distance it kind of started to hit me that basically the my entire life that i had been living for the previous year of living and eating and sleeping the salton sea walk was right there just a few miles ahead of me that's when the mine started to wander the closer i got and the more i could see the yacht club the finish line the more i started thinking about wow this this is it that's when the mud and the stuff between here and there kind of started to go away and i really started thinking about more of then what what kind what am i going to do after that that was that became a big for some reason that was uh on my mind is that i i had no other life for the last year other than the salton sea walk everything else became less and less important where i didn't care about if i had any blisters we i didn't even wasn't even putting on my the waders that i used to walk through the canals anymore to keep my feet dry didn't matter anymore because it was right there i could see the finish line but as i walked up and turned the corner where it goes from beach to parking lot i saw 50 people standing there and that kind of shocked me and then as i got closer and came around the corner more i saw my wife and my son and i hadn't seen them for a week and then i saw a hundred or more people all standing there cheering me on and i think that's that kind of hit me that not only did that affect me and hit me because i had finished and the finish line was right there but that all these people came out to support me and support salt and sea at that point as tired as i was and sleep deprived as i was and the crowd and everybody yelling and cheering me on that all kind of went away but the support and the amount of people that came out to uh to greet me was amazing that really hit me more than anything after that it's another kind of a blank i know that i went inside i had originally planned uh in thinking through in my head the days before what i would do on the finish line i was gonna stand up in front of everybody and say something profound and thankful and i think i just went inside and kind of broke down i think i was just overcome with with everything and and and i just kind of took it all in [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] hey thank you buddy can i keep that thank you buddy thank you [Applause] [Music] 20 state senate we're honored to recognize you for your 100 plus mile walk and the importance of the california's largest sea and also your dedication to bring awareness to restoration of the salt safe on behalf of the california state senate state of california and senator jeff stone we appreciate your efforts and look forward to following you for many [Applause] times one of the biggest questions that i'm asked or that i'm asked most often in person by my friends by my family [Music] is why should we save salt and sea why should anybody care what happens to salton sea if the salton sea is allowed to die it will impact everyone from mexico to los angeles from san diego to barstow directly impacting their health breathing that poison dust asthma rates will go up cancer rates will go up if you live in california if you live in that area you'd better care and when that happens somebody's going to have to fix it then people are going to be dying and then who's going to pay state of california can't balance their budget they're not going to have the money to pay they avoided it they kicked the can down the road year after year after year so now everybody's going to have to pay we can pay for it now we can pay for it later either way we're going to pay for it we can pay 20 to 70 billion over the next 50 years and then thereon or we can invest now on a c to c whole c solution and together with that develop seven gigawatts of solar and geothermal energy biodiesel algae production and others and i think create enough revenue stream to pay that right back in a reasonable time frame if we don't do salt and sea restoration which was at least in my mind a state obligation and we rely on the mitigation the state pays for that anyway the salton sea is definitely at a tipping point we're at a place where we could either have a beautiful example of what we can do as human beings coming together with solutions in mind a place for people and animals to live healthy for many many years or we can see an absolute environmental disaster correctly done the salton sea is an opportunity not a catastrophic disastrous problem so salt c is absolutely worth saving to do less than save it is is to do a great injustice to the environment and the economy of southern california i see it being a very vital opportunity for not only recreational activities including skiing boating and fishing camping and hiking but also an economic driver with homes and businesses around it this place could become what it was meant to be it would be a greater benefit to society to have this become something like it was before we could have golf courses we could have boating you know we could have restaurants we could have jobs we could have a community that's thriving and not one that is turning into a ghost town and that would be something to look forward to something i'd be proud to be a part of it's a masterpiece that was a accident and now we need to repaint it and put it back to what it needs to be and that is being a vital part of southern california the coachella valley the city of india and our community so what can the average person in mexico or the average person in california do what we recommend is you get involved you go to your senators you go to your congressman you go to your supervisors you go to your union and you find something you like and get involved get a hold of it and just do it just roll up your sleeves and get in the game as an average citizen you got to realize this is going to affect your community this is going to affect your town your kids your grandkids your husband your wife we really need you to get involved we needed to talk to your senators talk to your local representative talk to your assemblyman the governor come up with a plan make sure your voice is here power together will come forward when we all agree that this is an issue that's going to affect us all in some way or another tell your local representatives at uh county levels and and water agency levels that they need to work together to solve this problem for the sake of everyone and everyone's kids and grandkids it's our choice but we make this choice with our words with our hearts and with our pens and we can write letters we can get on social media we can learn about the salt and see share the stories about it we want to promote harmony we want to promote the existing projects we want to promote the geothermal we want to promote the projects that aren't built yet just waiting for funding we want us all to work together if we all work together it'll get done that's the key thing we need to start now we need to get people to play nice we need people to cooperate and we need to get going we have less than 10 years to make this all happen so it's one year later almost to the day i've been back to the salton sea a few times and i've noticed that the water level continues to go down i've noticed that just from the time i had come back in 2014 till today 2016 uh the water levels dropped dramatically and it's going to continue that way unless someone does something so i still like to think of myself as a big proponent of salton sea and saving the sea and the surrounding area i still like to be as vocal as i can be to try to continue to get the word out hopefully try to make other people and more people aware of salton sea and what's happening and what's going to happen if our leaders don't make some changes a year later has it made any difference i like to hope that it has i know that a lot of people got the salton sea in front of them a lot of people know about the salton sea that maybe wouldn't have thought about it before had they not seen about crazy guy that was walking around in summer time there have been some changes governor brown has appointed friend of mine to the head of assaultancy task force there's been a few bills that have passed for more studying and some small projects that are helpful i like to hope that i played a part in that but we're just going to have to wait and see what our leaders do since uh randy's walking and the awareness that it brought to the community uh to to the salon seat there's been definitely an uptick in the in community involvement in students wanting to get involved in their own sea well i have heard of randy brown and he brought great awareness as he walked all the way around this lake which is bigger than lake tahoe and he did it in june like it's hot but he did it and he did it every day and people walked with him and cheered him on along the way and what he did was awesome it was a flag waving for restoration louder than we had ever seen before he had a huge number of followers to to his website and his facebook page when he did that walk a lot of people were aware about the salton sea due to him that were not aware before it did bring a lot of variety of of individuals that never heard of the salt and sea together along with the environmentalists and other people who want to save the sea so i my hats off to him and eco media for pushing that forward because it really did put the salton sea back into the highlight of people realizing there was a problem we're so happy that he came here and brought so much awareness to this place the morale that changed in this town was was phenomenal i'd never seen people so buzzed and so excited about the real thought that something would get done here i am always optimistic i'm hopeful because there is more awareness it feels good to help bring attention to the problems not just the water but help prevent what could turn into the biggest environmental catastrophe ever if it's allowed to continue to die it makes me feel proud that i was and i am part of the many people that are saying help save this place [Music] [Music] on behalf of all of us at salton seat save rc right kooby save rcd [Music] save our seeds [Music] save our suite [Music] save our feet rc [Music] is [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] so bye [Music] oh [Music] we were

Channel: NotaRubicon Productions

Views: 23,120

Rating: 4.87289 out of 5

Keywords: Salton Sea, SOS, Save Our Sea, climate, climate change, climate change documentary, salton sea documentary, sos the walk, salton sea walk

Id: rE_t9vFxH4c

Length: 61min 50sec (3710 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 29 2021