Breaking Point

[Music] deep within the heart of the southern california desert just a few miles south of lavish resorts lies a seemingly forgotten world glimmering in the distance like a mirage a mysterious body of water seems out of place in the parched desert landscape it's the largest lake in california yet even nearby residents don't know it exists have you heard of the salton sea i've never heard of the salts sea salt what did you call it is it salt innocency or salt of the sea i've heard it's around california nevada am i close somewhere over in europe area do you know what body of water that is next to you no no i don't know that one the salton sea no does that ring a bell no something about 80 miles from here no nothing is it a corporation is it it's a big lake in california oh salt lake city south nc sultan city it's like one word sultan oh i i honestly had no idea about that i thought it was two pinks i'm sorry do you have any idea what that is uh that's um well definitely isn't the sultan's seat no i don't know what that is [Music] at one time the salton sea was actually one of the most popular tourist destinations on the west coast today though its beaches are deserted littered with the bones of millions of dead fish a casualty of the water wars in the southwest the enormous sea is quickly shrinking the receding water reveals a toxic mix of fine dust and chemicals that is threatening the health of millions if nothing is done it may become the worst environmental disaster in u.s history for over 50 years experts have predicted this would happen millions have been spent on research and plans to save the dying sea have been debated for decades so why has nothing been done could salvation lie beneath the sea's murky waters will the solutions transform how we create energy on our planet [Music] can the salton sea be saved or is it already too late [Music] the story of the salton sea begins millions of years ago when the gulf of california stretched north from mexico once the gulf proceeded this vast depression almost 300 feet below sea level would periodically flood filling the salton basin when the colorado river would change direction the most recent of these inland seas lake kowia once covered more than 2 thousand square miles but evaporated in the intense desert heat 400 years ago at the turn of the 20th century this stretch of desolate landscape had become known as the imperial valley pioneering families came from across the country hopeful of building a more prosperous life and a new land in 1901 developers began using the dry alamo riverbed as a canal to bring irrigation water from the colorado river 80 miles away [Music] by 1903 more than 100 000 acres of crops were being grown but just one year later sediment clogged the canal choking off the lifeblood for the region engineers made several unprotected cuts into the river and water once again returned to the valley in the fall of 1904 though surplus agricultural runoff had spread into the salton basin threatening to destroy the new liverpool salt company [Music] then in the spring of 1905 the southwest region was inundated with record rainfall creating a swell of epic proportions on the colorado river the poorly constructed canals were violently breached and the entire volume of the river poured into the valley farmland homes and railroad tracks were quickly submerged or destroyed for 18 months numerous attempts were made to close the brakes but the mighty river could not be contained finally in february of 1907 the colorado's flow into the imperial valley mercifully came to an end in the river's wake an inland sea of massive proportions was left behind covering close to 600 square miles the salton sea was born [Music] in the 1930s boat races on the sea attracted thousands of spectators as world records for speed were set in the buoyant salty water tourism continued to expand and by 1950 the salton sea was the second most popular recreation spot in california during the 1960s more people visited the sea than even yosemite national park [Music] in the early 70s however fluctuating sea levels began to flood shoreline communities the situation worsened in 1976 and 77 as rare tropical storms brought torrential rains causing massive destruction for the next five years above average rainfall continued to flood the valley by the early 80s much of the remaining property along the shore was abandoned and left in ruins tourism vanished [Music] then in the 1990s massive fish and bird die-offs plagued the sea further destroying its reputation they're calling it the worst die-off of birds since the exxon valdez oil spill in alaska 120 000 of them at last count thousands of dead tilapia two to three feet wide along the edge of the sea at one time it looked like a freeway of belly-up fish pressed up about a quarter of a mile people would come in and have to push their boat through 15 feet of dead fish piled up on the shore that made it into the newspapers and it became less of a place that you want to go and spend the weekend [Music] the paradise that once was the salton sea is now gone the salton sea is poison and it's teetering on the edge a strong odor of sulfur hangs over the region and has become a dumping ground for toxic runoff and pollution killing millions of fish i've heard stories about it be careful if you swim in there you'll come back out and your flesh will be eaten it's not that kind of toxicity the nickname california's dead seed is more appropriate a lot of the newspaper activity basically speculated that the fish kills were because of bad agriculture there was dumping of toxic pesticides the newspapers concluded that there had to be some kind of a toxin that was causing all this without any knowledge at all we now know that a lot of the fish kills are due to hydrogen sulfide during the summertime which actually doesn't kill the fish directly it strips the oxygen and the fish suffocate and in the wintertime these fish die from low water temperatures on the other hand the bird kills were the result of some really exotic transmissions of classic avian diseases like avian botulism so we've solved some of the mysteries and debunked the myth that it was agriculture or pesticide dumping or something like that despite the truth misconceptions persist and the sea's appearance continues to leave a lasting negative impression if you search the internet you will find most articles describe the region as a post-apocalyptic wasteland many people still believe the sea is a toxic waste dump that's not worth saving man it's nasty there now the water's stagnant it's uh polluted and uh it's an environmental nightmare waiting to happen it looks kind of like a scene from mars i would never fish there ever again man that place man oh wow no i wouldn't go swimming in it no i wouldn't i wouldn't get close to it it is sad that you know people have the misconception that this is a polluted place that only individuals who are weird live out here and that it is a post-apocalyptic area but no in fact the water quality in the salton sea although it's very salty it's not actually that bad yes there's farm runoff yes there's a little bit of pesticide and a little bit of fertilizer in there but it's also full of biological activity that eat all of that stuff so the actual concentration of toxic components in the salt and sea water is actually quite low in fact it's not polluted at all pesticide residues and other things are all sequestered in the sediment so it's really surprisingly clean you wouldn't drink the water the same way you wouldn't drink seawater it's loaded with salt but you can swim in it you can boat in it you can fish in it the challenge is is sometimes it can smell bad [Music] i think it's a stinky mess it smells really bad like it stinks it smells terrible [Music] people get confused and the smell that we we smell today to me is no different than going to the beach in san diego i smell the same smells to me it's life and death it's what we see in an ecosystem the smells that people probably are referring to that smells like rotten eggs that's hydrogen sulfide it is very obnoxious odor and it can be toxic there's something in the air at the salton sea and this time of year it typically stinks rotten eggs that's how people are describing the nasty stench hovering over southern california smog regulators spent 200 000 on a stink detector i usually just smell and say that stinks maybe the salton sea needs a rollage we started receiving complaints of rotten egg smell all over the basin not just next to the salton sea or not even just in coachella valley so we essentially had h2s being distributed for up to 100 miles throughout the basin for most of the basin it wasn't exceeding health standards but close to the salton sea we got some pretty high readings one of the situations at the sea is that it's hyper nutrient rich so we have algae blooms and then busts the fish population explodes and then crashes all of those nutrients settle onto the bottom of the sea and typically that's a very salty dense layer of water at the bottom it's cooler denser and so it doesn't mix well with the surface water all it takes is a slight wind though to turn that over and suddenly we've got all of those nutrients coming up in mass [Music] the things we'd expect at the levels we're seeing are basically nausea headaches and things associated with a really strong nuisance order it could be other effects longer term if it were exposed to a high level very long term but that wasn't uh the case in this situation what do they have standards for it though if it's not that big a deal i mean well it is a big a deal we take it very seriously and the standards are set by the state to protect public health but you know headaches and nausea are not something to laugh off either i mean if you're having those effects it can snowball into other health effects as well so we don't think anybody should be experiencing headaches or nausea from air pollution anywhere these events as the sea recedes will become that much easier to turn that water over as it's shallower and shallower and the nutrients are more and more concentrated [Music] some experts described our drought as the worst on record this is what drought looks like in the state of california it is a virtual desert from the north then all the way down to the south end everyone is being gripped with these bone dry conditions across the state water is a scarce resource in the southwest what we've seen in the last few years especially on the colorado river is that source is going to be challenged because you've got increasing needs in the basin states and a decrease in [Music] supply [Music] most people don't realize the major metropolitan areas of the southwest including la and san diego it's about 10 of the us population and we rely on essentially one river colorado river for much of that water a lot of people are attributing the extreme drought that we're going through in the more frequent or prolonged droughts to climate change and this may be our new normal going forward and so we need to adapt to it iid has one of the highest priority water rights on the colorado river but the river is over taxed and we think over in the next few years in particular with this drought we'll have even more problems with delivery of water so it's incredibly important to be able to balance the agricultural and the industrial use against things like the salt sea it's an important part of the economy and it's important part of this area and so we need to have some balance imperial valley farmers grow 80 percent of the nation's winter vegetables generating more than 5 billion dollars in total economic impact it takes a tremendous amount of water to grow crops in the desert though and almost 1 trillion gallons from the colorado are used annually in the imperial valley for decades southwestern states have been fighting over this precious resource california historically overused its share of the colorado until a landmark agreement in 2003 forced the state to reduce its water consumption as a consequence though water was diverted away from imperial valley farms resulting in less runoff flowing into the already shrinking salton sea in 2003 the federal government got together with all of the water users and developed a quantification settlement agreement as part of that iad transferred 300 000 acre feet of water to coachella valley water district on the north end and over the mountain to san diego county water authority the reason for that was the industrial and the populations over there needed that water [Music] the qsa is the largest agriculture to urban water transfer that's ever been done and it's a market-based transfer so san diego is paying imperial irrigation district for the water the price paid for that water pays for imperial irrigation district to upgrade its delivery system so you're talking about flooding fields in the past and moving more towards drip irrigation concrete lining of lateral canals things of that nature in the mid 80s and certainly leading up to the qsa the imperial irrigation district has been accused of wasting water and so this mechanism allows them to become more efficient with their water usage as california's largest colorado river water user the qsa was sort of a carrot and stick agreement where it was like we're going to pay you for this water if you do it this way but if you don't we're probably going to launch lawsuits against you for wasting water so it's your choice it's undeniable that as a result of the qsa the salton sea will shrink as the imperial irrigation district moves into efficiency-based conservation less water will make it to the sea the conservation is great and we all need to conserve water but when you have a lake bed that relies on water that's used in the fields to keep the lake at a certain level that conservation is a problem [Music] when we started the transfer none of the conservation measures were in place but initially we had to conserve some water for two things one to deliver to the partners in the qsa and the other for the salton sea because until 2017 iid agreed to deliver colorado river water to the sea [Music] the final cutoffs at 2017 are dramatic and immediate so as much as we've seen some reduction in the level now it'll become far worse and much more rapid in 2017 and beyond the salton sea is one of a unique class of lakes that are classified as terminal lakes that means it's one way only the water comes in everything that it carries with it comes in and the water evaporates [Music] in our case the inflows from the new and the alamo contribute roughly four million tons of salt a year three quarters of the inflow comes in from those two rivers but those two rivers are really just part of the irrigation system their agricultural return flows both channels would be dry if it wasn't for the agriculture inflow the current salinity is roughly 54 parts per thousand to put that in perspective the average of all the oceans in the world is somewhere between 35 and 40 parts per thousand so we're roughly 50 percent higher than say the pacific ocean this is one of the if not the most productive fishery in the world we had four species of fish we now have basically the one species tilapia the estimates are in the tens of millions 20 30 million maybe 100 million but those are just estimates we've talked to fisheries experts and the experts have designated that roughly 60 parts per thousand is when we expect the tilapia and most the fish to disappear [Music] so you're saying no matter what happens 100 million fish are going to die it's inevitable that the the main water body of the salton sea will get over 60 parts per thousand that is gonna sooner or later cause a fish tie off yes it's not that the fish will die they just won't reproduce so over five or six years you'll lose a fishery we suspect that as soon as the fish disappear that we'll lose basically half of the species of birds as we go further and further and if nothing's done we get to losing the various suites of invertebrate species then eventually you have no birds that can use this site [Music] we've been told they'll find someplace else to go and yet we have no idea where that might be [Music] this is the center of the flyway for not just birds that are migrating on the pacific coast but for half of the continent for many species this is absolutely critical 424 bird species have been seen here that's among the highest if not the highest number of bird species recorded on a national wildlife refuge in the entire country very few people have ever been here in february and seen these massive fleets these great armadas of the white pelican it's the most amazing bird i've seen in flight nobody knows that nobody's seen that unless they come down here and see that 85 of the north american white pelicans winter there 90 of the north american eared greeds for many species they don't have any place else to go this is the only place in the continental u.s where we have ground nesting brown pelicans 10 000 or so [Music] double crested cormorants these are sea birds that would otherwise be along the coast but those habitats are gone with the loss of wetlands in california which has been very dramatic more than 90 percent of the homes and food where wildlife birds have foraged and lived in the last hundred years are no longer there better than ninety percent we have areas like the salton sea that are making up for that for the birds that survive today dependent on that for their life cycle if the salton sea isn't here providing those values food water shelter they're potentially going to be losing their lives it's going to break the migratory path that they're taking on their flight south of here or on their way north it is vitally important to those birds that live here in their life cycle their lives are dependent on it [Music] we requested an inventory of all birds that were ever banded at the salton sea wherever they were relocated in the world we got that information it was plotted on a map and it provided some surprising connections we didn't expect a connection with the texas gulf coast and yet it was there we have birds that were recovered far into central and south america we have birds that were recovered into central asia it really illuminated that this is not just a regional resource it's an international resource today out there there's probably close to 100 000 birds feeding and getting good meals throughout the day and it's keeping them healthy you take that out of the equation and where are they supposed to make that up at there are no options there's only so many food resources in any particular area and if we start cramming 20 birds in an area that's meant for 10 then they all start starving if the salt and sea were not here in the future it will have wide-ranging impacts outside of this area fate of the struggling salton sea is a hot topic as the water dwindles exposing lake bed and sending unhealthy dust into the air strong winds blasted dust and sand through the skies of southern california including palm springs last night in a matter of seconds the sky looked like this officials issued an advisory stating the winds caused particle concentrations to reach unhealthy levels and people are urged to avoid outdoor exertion we're not talking about fish and wildlife anymore we're talking about human life and the potential human health catastrophe that could happen if we don't find some way to stabilize and maintain the salton sea we were talking 2017 2018 2019 we would have significant areas of the current seabed exposed and potentially having huge dust storms and the result problems that would occur from that we're already seeing vast exposures on the south shore as much as several miles out from where the waves were in 2003 if this continues we'll see enormous expanses of very arid saline silty sediments that is a potentially very serious problem if in fact the sea is allowed to recede which would expose those sediments to the desert winds when you have a surface like a desert surface that may have once been wet it generally crusts over a little bit of dust starts blowing and that dust itself breaks the crust and then that crust is broken and more dust gets kicked up and that in turn breaks more crust and kicks up more dirt and you get this chain reaction and before you know it the whole surface is emissive and everything is just blowing up into a huge dust cloud it's a very fine salty dust it makes a large plume that travels across the entire valley dust from this area travels over the mountains to san diego orange county los angeles if this were gone there would be intense dust storms and that would make a lot of people sick it would kill people these sediments are so fine 2.5 millionths of a meter you could get 30 sediments in the width of a human hair they're so small that if you inhale these into your lungs they can perfuse straight into your bloodstream carrying with them whatever chemicals are attached to the sediment that would be cadmium arsenic selenium not good things the most serious effects that have been observed for particles have been cardiovascular so perhaps heart disease there's been all kinds of studies with the very small particles that show they can move throughout the body they've shown some neurological effects in the brain in some of the animal studies they've shown effects in the kidneys so pretty much every organ or every system in your body has been shown to have some effects from these particles we need only look as far as owens dry lake for a good example of what could happen the owens dry lake situated on the southeast side of the sierra nevada was dewatered by the los angeles department of water and power in the 1930s and that exposed an area of about 25 000 acres what was owens lake as now owens dry lake the air quality management district there has actually issued emergency warnings for people when their dust storms get really serious to where they evacuate their own staff out of the basin they've had recordings of more than 25 000 parts per million this is choking dust that you would suffocate if you were exposed to this luckily the owens valley only has several hundred residents that live there when we compare that to the salton sea we're looking at four to five times that area of exposure with 1.5 million people that live in immediate proximity to the sea mind you the baseline condition in the coachella valley imperial valley exhibits the worst hospitalization rate for respiratory disease in california that's the baseline condition without the seed being withdrawn children and elderly are most susceptible to particulate pollution and respiratory disease that comes from that this really came home to me some years ago one of my colleagues on the salton sea science subcommittee his 13 year old daughter passed away from an asthma attack in the imperial county and that really struck home to a lot of us that this is serious business and we're exposing our children to this not just locally but this is going to impact all of us within you know 100 miles of the basin we're easily within range of these dust storms we cannot afford to let that happen i understand the magnitude of what is coming that's a toxic soup beneath and in the soil and you don't have to know that it's happening to understand that it will look at the wind here this is a windy place and it carries simply not that far away those lovely dust tornadoes that we get will be full of toxic chemicals and they're not going to stay in this town they travel it goes into the air it goes into our crops it goes into absolutely everything [Music] so you're you're already noticing dust in the air huh living in it now i sweep the floors in my house every day of white sand i wake up in the morning with sand [Music] i've lived in brawley most of my life and there's health issues that a lot of families have suffered from cancer to to other health conditions and you know we see a lot of younger children that are becoming sick you know i really care about the community that i live in i care about my children because i know that they're the next generation if we don't do anything about it it's still going to cost billions of dollars just to keep the dust from blowing and billions of dollars in health care costs to do nothing is not a good alternative it's very expensive and it would be deadly [Music] time is now for action the time is right to act the time for action is upon us now is the time we cannot afford to wait the time to begin cleaning up the salton sea is long overdue it's only a question of time there is not time to fool around with this any longer not enough is being done another year from now may be too late so let's quit talking about it let's get on with the job we are committing with this bill to fix the salton sea despite years of study and research there isn't a good plan in hand right now here we go again we have been studying the salton sea now for well over 30 years everybody in the state wants to do something about the salt and sea the reason things haven't been done is because we don't know what to do if all we do is continue to study the problem we're going to end up with the worst documented environmental disaster in history what you need before you get there is a road map they say let's be more thoughtful or let's have a better road map what this really means is they want the salton sea to die people see the studies and they know that it's a joke they'll see the front pages and the headlines and they'll say no more studies it's time to prove that we'll finally get serious here and clean up the salton sea on this vote the yeas are 221 the nays are 200 the bill is passed the motion to reconsider is laid upon the table you had a major effort back in the 90s to come up with a plan and they did come up with something that maybe could work and then the qsa was signed and much of the inflow is now going to go to san diego and suddenly the problem has changed it's going to get much more severe much faster so you've got to reevaluate the whole thing yet again the state of california is on the verge of determining a plan that will permanently save the salton sea deterioration in local air quality due to blowing sediments are a very serious reality the status quo mr chairman is simply not an option we have an f phrase for you down in the area around the salton sea and it's called fed up we were fed up with the process of moving responsibility for restoration of the salton sea from one committee to the next the federal government the state government has taken now years decades to do nothing and because we're sitting here talking about it now that means it's not going to be done in time to save this shrinking shoreline 16 years 40 million dollars more studies we're still in the same place nothing's happened there's nobody local to stick up for the salton sea even senator boxer was here a few weeks ago she gave a rousing great speech said we cannot let this happen but she's been in senate for 20 years you know and she's let it happen i mean they've all let it happen they all give speeches saying we can't let it happen and yet it's happening [Music] i just kind of disgusted that they can't make a decision you know either do it or don't do it and that's the thing it irritates us here in the valley i think once it's on the brink of destruction it's like oh let's save it well you could have saved it 50 years ago you could have preserved it 50 years could have preserved it 20 years ago it's going to be so much more money because they waited so long to do it that i mean if they just shut up and do what they're supposed to do and get it done you're not very optimistic about our politicians who make these decisions no i'm not very optimistic about any politicians i'm sorry the sea's been studied to death and i'll just be kind of blunt so people can make money when you're studying a place to death but nothing's happening there's a lot of people making money off of the state or federal coffers but all it is is just to show i understand the frustration the scientists are just as frustrated that we're not moving forward with actual projects on the ground they're asking of us to get stuff going and stop studying that's not a wise strategy because we need to know how is taxpayer money being spent is it being spent wisely are we achieving what we want to achieve we do live in a community with demographics of over 85 percent latino population much of the population does live in the low income minority not only do we not have the resources of the community to offset the impacts that are potentially going to occur as the consultancy recedes but people just have a lesser opportunity to move for example they can't just pick up and move to san diego the cost of living is so much greater that i mean they have no other option and that's why it's just become so important to solve the issues now in a proactive manner before we get to point of no return to find out what's really going on you need to go around the sea and talk to the folks that live there frankly as a mother of two children that scares the heck out of me they know what's happening and i get a sense they have a very realistic pragmatic take on it that probably nothing's going to happen that they're going to be stuck holding bad properties and living in an unhealthy area for a long time to come what you get to is as the sea shrinks you ultimately have landowners who own parcels currently underwater as that land becomes emissive they are going to be ultimately responsible for air quality impacts and what not the primary land holders are the imperial irrigation district and the federal government well i guess it depends on who you talk to is who's who's responsible i think iid's position is that the state of california legislatively promised to restore the salton sea and that's the reason the iid agreed to the qsa or the water transfer the quantification settlement agreement caps the liability of the water agencies at 300 million dollars they'll hit that real easily real quickly and beyond that the liability is borne by the state of california itself we the taxpayers of california are going to pay for this one way or the other [Music] don't bury your heads in the sand bite it while you can [Music] in the last 40 years more than 200 proposals have been presented to save the salton sea a lack of funding and serious disagreements over which plan should be adopted has resulted in very little getting done we have a state plan with a nine billion dollar price tag the catch is there was no money from the state to do it we're at the juncture now where we're trying to figure out a way to ask them to work with us at the local level to come up with a hybrid plan of some type that is more reasonably priced and they can be done in small bites at the apple along the way and get off the idea that there's only one way to solve the problem and it's going to be solved in sacramento one of the biggest issues we need to do over the next few years is manage expectations we don't think the salton sea can be returned to the 60s and 70s and i think people need to recognize that we haven't got enough water to supply a sea of the size of 50 to 100 years ago could we supply a sea of a third that size yeah it's probably we could even with what we see as the lowest future amount of water that we would bring in [Music] our plan is to try and do some incremental habitat and air quality mitigation measures around the sea as it shrinks to cover that playa area so you end up with a probably shallower areas of the salton sea but you end up with water on a lot of those areas or you end up with some other kind of land use what we would like to see is the state and the federal government come to the table and be part of the team so that we can get the strings off some of the money that's available there for planning efforts and begin a renewed environmental impact report and study of what alternatives maybe are available today that weren't even thought of 10 years ago when those studies were last really updated until they take all the water away we have the opportunity to do some scale of restoration i've heard people that start with if we lose the fish we might as well walk away from the lake and just let it go because there's no hope i'm not in that category there's always hope as long as we've got some water to work with even degraded water so we've got this plan moving forward that doesn't preclude full-scale restoration if you want to do it if you find the nine billion dollars but it does something incrementally as we move forward maybe they can fund something smaller to get things going and maybe we can get in the private funding to get the rest of it happening i'm hopeful but it will be a big challenge it got pretty depressing when the decision making went to sacramento and they hired a bunch of new bureaucrats and spent 25 million dollars on who knows what we lost a lot of our momentum well we've regained that in just the last couple of years and i'm confident that we have the initiative now so how are we going to pay for this well the solution comes from one of those other special things about the salton seed [Music] the salton sea sits on top of perhaps the largest geothermal resource area in the western hemisphere this area is prime for geothermal energy development it's all part of the tectonic system where the pacific plate is grinding fitfully past the north american plate and the faults open up these windows into the deep earth where heat comes up and that can be used to produce electricity and then transport that electricity to where people can use it there are two fields that produce 75 percent of the geothermal energy in the united states and that is the geysers in northern california and the salton sea field heber and brawley to be usable geothermal energy you have to have heat you have to have a fluid and you have to have permeable rock that allows the fluid to move through the rock and harvest the heat it's been estimated that we have 1.9 to 2.5 gigawatts that's 2.5 billion watts of geothermal power there available 24 7 forever we're up to about 350 megawatts of geothermal power online at the sea today and there are numerous other proposals that are pending right now [Music] there have been some other discoveries of rare earths in these geothermal brines that they bring up from depth such as lithium the same stuff that powers our cars and makes batteries [Music] most of it's produced today in argentina and brazil at great expense and through very elaborate solar evaporation process to generate the lithium supply it's five thousand dollars per ton and we depend on this for batteries and computer cells and other things the lithium in these geothermal brines however turns out to be at a much higher concentration we're talking about increasing geothermal generation by 50 times the salton basin would quickly become the lithium capital of the world and then we look at solar if we put them on the exposed lake bed i've calculated rather conservatively we could easily generate another four gigawatts of power on just 10 000 acres of the lake bed add to that the two and a half to four gigawatts of geothermal we're looking at a renewable energy mecca several orders of magnitude greater than anything else on earth [Music] algae is an interesting prospect out at the salton sea if we took algae production facilities and we put them on the inflow tributaries to the sea the new and alamo rivers at the south end primarily what they would do is take up the nutrients the nitrates and phosphates coming off from the ag fields produce oxygen as a byproduct and grow lots of algaes we have made fuels from the algae oil we've flown airplanes on it every single engine that could be run by conventional oil has now essentially been run by algae oil the sort of ingredients you need are you need water but it doesn't have to be fresh water it can be marine water or brackish water or even waste water you need good sunlight and you need good temperature so imperial valley is a fantastic place to grow it they thrive in salt water if we put an algae pond on top of those exposed playa we will get an economic benefit of creating jobs and we'll get an environmental benefit of we don't have the exposed plyo to blow down this is going to be huge talk about investment between the geothermal energy the solar energy the biodiesel algae production this is going to be the energy mecca of the western hemisphere clearly [Music] suddenly we're talking real money enough to make the 8 to 10 billion dollar infrastructure cost payable in a relatively short time with regard to its return on investment [Music] millions of homes in the southwest could be powered by the renewable energy developed in the region but it won't happen quickly building the power plants and transmission lines will take many years everyone hopes this public private collaboration will deliver some of the funding needed to save the sea but much more will be required to halt this rapidly approaching disaster [Music] hello these governmental agencies know how and have the power to fix any of the things that we're focusing on but without a push from the community without a loud cry from the community nothing's going to get done [Applause] we need to be held responsible it's our responsibility to take up the cause take up the banner and make this happen people can make a huge difference by participating and so we need to make sure that we are proactive and engaging the community because they're the ones who are going to be living here they're the ones whose children are going to be raised here and it's going to become the labor force for future generations we don't have time to sit around we are sending out an sos save rc [Music] people need to step up right now send a letter to the president the governor anyone that you see could help this situation there's a lot to lose if the sea you know is not saved i sometimes pray about it with my children we pray and we we know it's going to happen i really encourage everybody that can take a day to come out here to look past some of the rundown shacks and to look past at some of the fish bones from the fish style and actually see the beauty it is strikingly beautiful from its east shore you can see some of the best sunsets on the planet where the sea becomes calm and still you could skip a rock on it forever and you see the sunset over the still waters with the dark silhouette of mountains on the opposite shore and it's a sunset like i've never seen elsewhere in the world come and see this place for yourself that's one of the ultimate things once you see this place it changes your heart it changes your soul and your spirit and it makes you realize that we're all connected and part of something much bigger that we can have a truly positive and wonderful effect on that is what will fix the solvency not being sad because of what hasn't worked but being happy and optimistic for what will work we have to come together to save mercy [Music] the salton sea has reached its breaking point to do nothing is no longer an option this is an example of the many difficult choices we are faced with in our country what are our priorities and how do we value our nation's resources why do we so often wait until a tragedy strikes before taking action to stop it the salton sea could be a great environmental success story or an unprecedented disaster only time will tell but time is running out [Music] [Applause] [Music] from where do we go [Music] so you

Channel: Palomar Films

Views: 45,818

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Id: LpTLW1ivx-Q

Length: 59min 30sec (3570 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 10 2021