California's Disappearing Lakes | Abandoned (Full Episode)

[Music] this place look at it just look around you and look at the beauty that and the potential and then look at what's left now because of people and Mankind and their Hasty waste I mean look at this person's dream home that they built here look at it now it's a box where people go and smoke dope and hang out late at night and try to some chick from up the street if there's one anywhere because I met the only one here and she's craziest you don't want nothing to do with her but I'm in love with her she's somewhere around here hiding in one of these places [Music] [Laughter] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] smell that dead fish [Music] standing here and just looking at it like through your screen right now you'll have no idea the environmental disaster that this place is there's some toxic problems going on here the Salton Sea is the biggest body of water in California a 380 Square Mile Lake in the middle of the desert between the Coachella Valley and the Mexican border [Music] today the sea is best known for the decaying Resorts that litter the shoreline but just a few decades ago it was booming [Music] landlocked rich in Beauty and The Lure Sportsman's Paradise the new recreational capital of the world attracting tremendous numbers of water skiers and voters and just plain people all the year round they called the Salton Sea a miracle in the desert but it was an epic mistake that created it in 1905 Engineers were digging a canal to divert water to Farmers in Southern California after cutting too deep into the banks of the Colorado River water poured into a desert sink for almost two years the lake should have evaporated but agricultural runoff from nearby Farms kept it topped up developers saw the sea as the perfect place to build a new resort playground and for a while it worked from the 50s to the 70s the sea attracted millions of tourists but trouble was lurking beneath the surface [Music] is becoming saltier and more polluted and by the late 70s it started to smell [Music] then came algae blooms and fish die-offs of biblical proportions [Music] now the sea is shrinking and toxic dust storms are the latest plague there's not a lot going on around here it's about noon nice day I'm seeing a mix of houses and mobile homes and empty buildings I think this is the old Marina oh there's a pool I wonder if the Rat Pack swam in this pool you think the rat packs swam in there Sammy Davis Sinatra yeah they did just reading some of the outdoor art here one of them says good luck don't die uh low tide low life this person really likes their cat seems like it might have been a happening spot a lot of boats coming in and maybe a little swimming and hot tubbing you can't swim or hot tub and there's no way you can get a boat in here anymore so things have changed oh good Jets [Music] um I think the general perception of this place is that it's poisonous there's a billion dead fish everywhere it stinks all the time it's it's hotter than hell and there's just like crazy whacked out weird desert desert people everywhere but I think that the story is a little different than that I think yeah it has some of those elements but there's a lot of like normal American life here as well the ironic thing about this place is that this is the place where all the people with money would come and you know ball out and now this is the place where people with no money come because it is so affordable for them to live here I'm on my way to the sunny Bono Wildlife Refuge I'm going to meet up with some high school kids and go on a field trip get their point of view of what it's like to live at the Salton Sea how do you guys like living in this area sucks Tom and it sucks yes two if you want to do anything really if you want to go out to the movies or go to a mall yeah you have to drive for like an hour or two an hour away or two we recently got Jack In The Box and that's fast food yeah yeah it's like the closest thing we have to a hangout why is it that I always see music videos shot out here because it looks like the apocalypse yeah apocalypse cells apocalypse cells you're right what are we looking at over here what's all this that is how much the water used to be how worth it oh it receded from here all the way to over there yep wow that's that's a far yeah it was about six feet a year still about six feet six feet a year you see looking back this was just the walk up to the hill all of that used to be full of water right all of this bottom part has this little ledge over here as well and is it going to slow down or it actually has been drying up exponentially so it's going to get worse [Music] oh it is very it's very very big yeah it looks like the ocean [Music] so do these Sandy areas do they kick up a lot of dust yeah they do a lot of the people from the local communities like nylon and Calipatria complain about the air quality and how especially people with asthma they have a hard time breathing all the communities around the salon sea are low income families and they don't have a choice to move away sure so they have to be here right I mean if they could provide better air quality for their children I mean I'm pretty sure they would and if it completely dries up then it's going to be worse it's going to reach all the way to cities that are going to start to carry because then they're going to be affected by it so the window picked this up like all the chemicals and dust and bring it over to La all the way through the valley yeah yeah just carry it all the way up and then they won't just have smog to deal with they'll have this too yeah and then they'll really care yeah then they'll what do you think the future is for the sea until La cares that we're here because it's affecting them and the other big cities like La you know it nobody's going to do anything right everyone wants to help but yeah it's not there hasn't been an official plan right one plan for everyone to follow so that we can actually change there's a lot of empathy but there's just not a lot of action exactly yeah [Music] so crazy that the largest lake in California is an accident it's the mistake lake [Music] these kids they're 16 17 and they just know they want to go out of here get a better education get better work and then come back and help their families out which uh I think is a really a nice sentiment they think that no one cares about their town and the health problems that they're suffering from the Dust and it kind of feels like they almost hope that it gets worse so that it could get better [Music] for now the sea is shrinking water and air pollution are getting worse and seaside towns have seen better days I ran into a local named Raymundo near the Salton Sea beach in an area he calls the salty these were like Premier vacation homes what happened to these places did people moved out I mean they don't want like the smell the properties lost their value people left I mean that's the bottom line nobody wanted to stay anymore and now it's just falling into the ground and no it's just wasting away this place was the vacation spot I mean Elvis was out here John F Kennedy was out here you know the fishing here was off the hook there was Corvina running it was on the hook yeah it was definitely on the hook and running the fact of the matter is the water's become so low that you can literally almost walk all the way across the Salton Sea really if you wouldn't sink so far in the mud right it's Mucky it is real Mucky I've actually lost shoes and they're going to cut Mesquite out oh there's mesquite trees everywhere and mesquite's good to cook with and yeah and what man doesn't want to cook with wood I don't know I mean I like meat and I like it cooked so why not use wood it's free so is the water good to go in or what um it used to be and the problem with letting this place go is twofold one it's detrimental to the the migratory waterfowl in this country and in the world at this point because they've become so dependent on it and two if this dries up the alkaline dust will kill everyone and we'll have to evacuate every house from Mexico to Moreno Valley and there will be nothing left out here but a big salty Bowl I mean we've got we've spent billions of dollars on a bomb that can ring your doorbell and verify it to you before it explodes why not spend some money on preserving our country right and preserving a landmark like this for you know generations to come for our kids for our kids kids this was a desert and now it's a sea think about that dude I mean that's your planet ever changing ever growing ever adapting ever persevering until we suck every ounce of blood out of it the problem is this place is nothing anymore no this has no monetary value to anyone no it's just this is where dreams go to die it was interesting walking around here with ramundo he has a much different perspective like he likes the the torn down stuff and he sees Beauty where a lot of people see just garbage it might not be the mainstream story and you might not be in the mainstream dude but that's that's the world it Freedom dude there's Freedom here and and that's what I'm looking for in my life is is the ability to to wake up every day and do just whatever the I feel like doing you know and and if that's hang out right here and look at graffiti art and smoke weed or run into guys like you and and and answer some questions uh that's the thing I'm gonna do and nobody's going to tell me any different anymore because you could be here today and not tomorrow and that's a fact dude and so if that's a fact what the are you doing with your life because me I'm living mine [Music] foreign [Music] this is kind of like what's happening to the Salton Sea [Music] [Applause] [Music] it looks pretty good for skating it's a little dirty but uh it'd be kind of fun to roll around on it possibly sweeping up some toxic dust [Music] it's a little rough but I like it that way [Music] together [Music] after skating the mini Salton Sea I felt ready to face more real world devastation so I met up with Carrie Morrison who's working to revive the area with his organization save RC so off to our left you'll see areas that I call the fingers there were a bunch of little boat launches and places where people had docks off the back of their houses and would have been a really cool place to live some of these are pretty nice custom homes that are just a little a little neglected now because people aren't quite as happy about where they live right a year and a half ago this had water all in here not enough to launch your boat but at least a lot a lot more it's gone down really quick [Music] the fingers is actually a recent development it was an attempt to revive the Salton Sea in the late 80s designed to be a retirement Haven where you could boat in and out of your own private canal I think it's interesting that so many people wanted to live on the water and built docks you know everyone wanted a boat and it was kind of their American dream and they moved to a place where they can get a great deal with a house on the water and have a lot of fun with their families and there's not enough water for that here now yeah unless we bring some water in from the ocean or significantly reduce the amount that we're using with the c at the moment right I was just talking with Carrie and one of the neighbors came out I'm kind of interested to see what it's like for him to live here so you live right here on these canals yeah yeah I've family bought the place in 89 and we paid 5 000 bucks for the property and it's cheap to live and obviously it's a beautiful place to live down here um do you guys notice the smell no not not right now I know it's like every so often you smell it but I've already gotten used to it where I don't even really notice it I'm so used to it now it really doesn't affect me too much every once in a while it gets really stinky down here but something you can live with [Music] can you tell me a little bit about what's happened here with the canals well you can see my dock down here that I used to run my RC boats out here and and now it it's it's probably about waist deep I want to say yeah probably the deepest at it at all yeah you know and they're charging us uh a channel maintenance fee in our taxes you know it's like there's no channel here it's really kind of ridiculous just bureaucratic have you seen a lot of people leaving the area recently because of the the changes here I I think from around the areas of the sea yeah people have moved away from the water you know at least it was you know you're on the water now I'm I'm on a mud pit what do most people around here really want you know um want it restored we want to be able to play in the water again that's the whole thing that's why we moved here so toxic you know it's just really corrosive even on the boats you'd have to wipe the stuff down it would just turn white after a little while it kind of makes me wonder the two people here that used to live in these houses they both died of cancer and the people on the end had cancer and the people next to me had cancer so it kind of freaks me out you know what what the conditions are down here people kind of they don't understand why I'm living out here but I live here too it's beautiful yeah you understand then yeah yeah it's a different way of life it took me a little bit you know getting used to it being a snowbird coming down here just during the winter now summers are horrible down here but if you got good AC you're good to go yeah you know government funding has been pledged to reduce the pollution in the sea but Greg's not getting his hopes up they said in 20 years it's going to be cleaned up well I'm hoping I can still water ski by then right yeah you know really what it comes down to the bones of dead fish bleach in the Sun at the edge of the Salton Sea a sea that Carrie is trying to save so right now we're walking on seabed yeah probably would have been close to our waist a few years ago and is this the stuff that the wind would pick up and cause problems with for People's Health yeah could kick it up and see that it'll make some dust yeah some places are a lot more some places are a lot less how long does the Salton Sea have left do you think if nothing gets done without setting up new water source we're looking at probably five six seven years until the fish won't make it and that's when the birds that are here or come here die or don't have anywhere to go then the longer we wait the bigger the dust storms get I mean look at here from here to there is five years yeah luckily there is unlimited water fairly close about 120 miles south uphill from here there's the sea Cortez the Pacific Ocean right for the price of a single B2 bomber we could bring a pipeline downhill from the ocean and have enough water to maintain this region for generations and then it's up to us what we do with it do we desalinate it filter it let it sustain the Salton Sea do we drink it those are our choices but we need that water here people need to look at that more like what's it going to cost to not do anything or what's it going to cost to do something and it's almost always about 10 minutes as much it's almost better always better to do something to act now yeah act now yeah the future for the Salton Sea seems uh iffy it's a huge problem with some very complicated fixes expensive fixes anyway the thought of this place uh drying up and then turning into a big dust bowl that kicks up big dust storms that have a lot of toxic and bad things in them is uh pretty terrifying I do believe that it is a super important place that needs to be protected I don't know it's a it's an oasis in its own way foreign looking at it now it's hard to believe that this area used to be teeming with happy tourists these Seaside towns have been choked out for decades as California's largest body of water gets smaller and more polluted in a way it still looks beautiful but the Salton Sea is in grave danger of turning into a toxic Dust Bowl 300 miles north west of Death Valley lies the future of the Salton Sea if it dries up [Music] Owens Lake a Battleground for the water wars between farmers and the city of Los Angeles a century ago Los Angeles won in 1913 the city of Los Angeles started taking water from this Valley and by 1924 this entire Lake was dry apparently you can fit all of San Francisco into the size of this lake bed pretty big the water should be above my head here this is the town of Keeler it's right on the lake shore or whatever this is called I don't think it's called Lakeshore if there's no lake anymore there's a term for the dust storms they get here they call it the Keeler fog I guess the wind blows up the dust in the lake or the lake bed and picks it up and carries it into the village and then they have These Warnings that uh tell people to stay at home when this is happening probably bum your whole day out wouldn't want to have a picnic that day right now it's super peaceful it's nice and crisp no Breeze really no one's around it's not that early is it no maybe there's a Keeler fog warning and we didn't get it what's it like living in a Lakeside town after the Lake's gone I went to meet up with a local Pirate Radio fanatic to find out morning morning you Steve yeah Steve McGreevy hi hey nice to meet you great thanks for meeting us yeah welcome to my uh Hideaway here my radio uh laboratory Hideaway oh wow this is a little bit change of Lifestyle from my San Francisco Bay Area corporate Financial District days okay here we are wow and these are all radios I'm a ham radio operator okay but that's only one tiny part of what I do some of these are for the the FM radio station I've got two of these antennas but most of these are for Hamming for for you know communicating pcq CQ how are you doing there in uh New York or uh Ireland or wherever yeah how far is your your property here from the lake bed it's right there this was like the Great Salt Lake in Utah okay so it's not a freshwater lake this used to be a real severely Sandy area out here this was called the North Sand sheet when that sand hits this this Alkali dust yep it kicks up the dust into the air it's a choking fog okay should be a dust plume right right on the town would it just sit there just right on the town for hours on end wow and you just have to hide inside and look out your window and see nothing but this this Haze the Keeler fog got so bad that in 2001 the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power the ladwp was forced to pump water back onto the lake to slow down the dust storms people thought they were actually going to turn this back into a lake but there's not enough water to do that right and send it to La as well yeah so they had to compromise by putting up an irrigation system just to wet the dust this is just such a complicated thing it's complicated yeah the problem with Southern California is is is air pollution the crudscape of Southern California in general I call it crud scale yeah what's crudscape that's what that's what Southern California looks like it's a crutch scape of just like 100 mile long city right it never ends you go from Palm Springs to San Fernando Valley you ever leave the city right it's a crud scape and it's all and they all need water it's a whole crisis that the desert Southwest is facing as these cities continue to mushroom we've really got to grow in Calamity coming in the future I think in 20 30 40 years there's just too many people with not too many too many people living too high consumption lifestyle you know everybody wants to to have their MC mansion and have a pool you know and have their pool and wash their little Yuppie cars and all that you know that's water water water water water you know you don't live in Mississippi this is Desert yeah in the long run this is toast one year five years this is feudal on the really bad days this whole valley still fills up with dust I can create my own personal Owens Lake dust storms same stuff as if I just hit this real hard I don't want to do it with your cameras okay here's here's a localized Keeler dust storm this is just like what happens out on the Owens Lake you know just see this stuff here that's what gets in the air you see that getting in the air off the lake bed that white yeah that's the killer Fox that's the Keeler fog that used to happen yeah this stuff dust I think we got it and that's what you don't want to breathe because God knows what's in this stuff arsenic included Clear My Throat sorry no problem [Music] Keeler was a thriving Lakeside town a century ago the Lake's long gone but there's still a few people hanging around TV you guys are Vice TV but if you go on YouTube they're all over YouTube I'm Rick Greg Greg thank you what's the short story what do you think about the Owens Laker right here what's going on what's going on mattress it's total Madness yeah is all the dust cousin like problems with people's respiratories well actually back in the 70s all the people here were on air mostly old people there's we got a lot of younger people here like oxygen tanks yeah there's all kinds of heavy metals yeah of asbestos alkaline Boron blah blah that goes on is that like day to day you can experience that is it when the dust storms when there was blowing other than that it's Paradise I've seen people coming all those Paradise I love them here yeah so what do you think the answer would be for here to fix this place an answer is there an answer some people say put water in the lake but there's no water to put in the lake I would say just quit messing around with it let nature take its course nature is its own healer yep it's just not going to happen in your lifetime yeah instant gratification isn't it isn't part of the Forte here it's just one of those things that took 100 years to screw it up if I take at least that long that for it to figure find its own balance you know for sure thanks for talking with us Greg all right it's good to meet you you guys have a good trip see ya so we're gonna go uh hit the lake bed we're gonna go on a lake bed yeah let's do it Steve offered to show me what's being done to control dust storms on what was once Owens Lake [Music] this is hay bale City literally what are the hay bales supposed to do the hay bales were supposed to shelter desert plants that they want to grow amongst the hay bales okay is it working no not not whatsoever the foolish thing about laying out the hay bales prematurely is they're getting covered [Music] thank you okay this is a good spot right here hey we haven't got what what is this a size oh how pretty oh this must be for the tourists oh how nice so over here there's a man-made lake on the lake bed and then over here they have all these sprinklers keeping the dirt wet it almost looks like a farm dirt wedding is the best way to put it create mud it's a lot of water being sprayed yeah they're really desperate to try to minimize the use of water out here it's a real desperate problem the LA DWP is facing because the less water they're shipping to Los Angeles means less revenue of rate payers in La it also means the city has to go on rationing at least the parts that are served by this area which I think is North Los Angeles do you know where this water is coming from Los Angeles Aqueduct it Taps into the aqueduct there and somewhere over there right this is literally former Owens River water the Owens River used to flow onto this Lake Bed and fill up the 100 square mile Owens Lake now it gets just enough to slow down the dust storms The Lion's Share of the Owens River is reserved for the Los Angeles Aqueduct 50 miles north of Keeler is where Los Angeles siphons off the Owens River behind me is the Owens River and just here is the beginning of the LA aqueduct [Music] there's a plaque over here what does this say the entirely gravity-fed Los Angeles Aqueduct remains one of the engineering marvels of modern times and continues to supply water through effective and responsible management by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power yeah the plaque doesn't really mention the devastation of Owens Lake I can't imagine what would happen if this River would dry up it's like four million people that are relying on this Little River let's take a walk across the historic Los Angeles Aqueduct intake it's sort of like a big cement Bridge owns River hello la aqueduct looks angrier on this side [Music] it may not look impressive today but in 1913 this thing was an engineering Marvel [Music] the aqueduct allowed LA to grow from a small city of three hundred thousand to a sprawling Metropolis in just a decade it takes a lot more water than the Owens River to hydrate greater La these days they've added two more aqueducts just like it as the city ballooned to almost 20 million humans how much more can this desert Metropolis grow [Music] [Music] I'm on my way to the old Cerro Gordo mine it's just above Owens Lake I feel like I'm in one of those old westerns we're coming into the old Canyon here we're about to get ambushed by the bad guys wow it's like a ghost town this might be our guy here hey Phil yeah hi Rick Rick nice to meet you great to meet you thanks for meeting us here sure no problem Phil is the air pollution control officer for the area it's his job to ensure that the ladwp follows through with their commitment to manage the dust storms created after they drained Owens Lake that's a big lake [Music] what did it take for the people here to get La DWP to do something about this league a lot of court cases yeah the air District can't um interfere with their water Gathering activities but where you can require mitigation for the dust pollution okay so you can't stop them from taking the water but you can say hey you got to fix this dust problem that's correct now they're doing something about it and is it working it is working it's a hugely successful project oh great we've controlled dust by over 90 percent at this point it took a lot of work and fighting but the people got what they needed a lot of work a lot of court cases a lot of settlements a lot of negotiations and you know 1.6 billion dollars at this point wow almost 2 billion almost 2 billion so is there any chance that this Lake could come back to be the full Owens Lake again why not I mean the water still bypasses the lake okay but you know I think the question to really ask is you know if it were to why wouldn't how could that happen right the it's and it's really the way money works the city of Los Angeles I believe gross is about 4.5 billion dollars a year wow in Valley Water [Music] foreign sea and I was seeing the problems that they're having there and they're talking about it possibly drying out like how Owens lake has do you see parallels between these two Lakes my advice don't take the water yeah you know I'll leave it as it is because once it's gone you don't have it to fix it and that's you know the story of Owens you know we this fix to Owens Lake to control the dust pollution isn't permanent you know it's an ongoing cost yeah how long can you put you know millions of gallons of fresh water onto a dirt pile yeah what do you what do you think about how people in Los Angeles are using the water from their owns Valley it's amazing how many people in Los Angeles don't understand where the water comes from and I know that over the last couple of decades there's been a force to educate the people of Los Angeles if you can educate them about where their water comes from the consequences of that water use it probably would be used more effectively and there are way too many people there for how much water there is yeah there's not enough water in that local Watershed to sustain so are you pessimistic or optimistic about the future well it depends sometimes I'm a pessimist you know I get really down on current situations um and then sometimes I see you know the resiliency of mankind um to solve things and to actually you know understand things and self-regulate there is hope [Music] if we can survive I think some of these harder times environmental changes that we see happening and are smart enough to uh to understand our place in the world and our connective location and connectivity to the land and the other animals and creatures I think that there's still hope yeah I'm with you all right maybe one day we'll figure out how to supply water to the cities of Southern California without sacrificing places like this until then owns Lake will exist only in our memory California [Music] and this is transmitting by the viola to FM relay updated 3.5 kilometers in yeah I went back to Keeler to catch up with Steve McGregor he's an audio Visionary who dedicated his life to recording the Earth's electromagnetic emissions and turning them into music he offered to take me out on a recording session to see how he captures his Earth sounds okay what is this that's the stand to hold the antennas up oh okay yeah the whole deal Loops out in the field the coiled looped antennas for stereo reception right only the only way to get real pristine recordings is you got to get away from this this mess right get out of the man the manscape and get back into the landscape we're at the Viking mine we're 10 miles from Owen's Lake and it looks way different it seems more natural that's for sure we're definitely out of the Owens Lake human blight Zone that's the Owens Lake Basin we're setting up the tripod setting up the loop tripod receivers on and then I'm going to put the loop the coil Loop antennas on it these are to capture the Earth sounds now they're in a wangle tangle as usual but you know the old trick with wires is to just called Shake yep there's a magic thing called Shake wires crap stupid tangle bush the problem with the desert is every little Bush and thing acts like a snag this is just Murphy's Law is then I hook it here uh to the upper one hopefully okay this goes to about you got it yeah about here there you go it's really non-crip oh okay the wind did that that's why I have a okay spread that out there all right that's all it takes turn Oh that's oh wow you ought to hear the cameras the cameras are making trippy noises in this thing really check that out the cameras are generating noise too here it goes to show you the uh the uh invisible world of radio electromagnetic emissions oh that's what that's called Alpha you can hear that yeah yeah yeah it does that it sounds like music is Alpha it's Russian that's Russia that's Russian it's Russian the BP yeah this is like sound machines people use you know like to fall asleep they put like an Ambient sound on yeah stuff like it kind of reminds me of that I fall asleep really easily to this stuff yeah I sometimes do this solitarily but it's always fun to have company yeah fellow radio nuts that come and visit we'll we'll head out into the boonies it's really a nice way to connect with nature again let's just enjoy the sunset yeah watching the sun set over the desert I thought about how out of place a lake would look here and how strange it is that right next door is a desert where owns Lake should be and then I thought about the shrinking salt and sea and how blight isn't just in our cities humans create blight in nature all the time to build those cities and as our cities continue to sprawl into the distance where's the water going to come from to help them grow sitting here with Steve it occurred to me you don't always have to go looking for answers sometimes you need to just listen [Music] [Music] one day [Music] [Applause] [Music] it does no harm to Future [Music] [Applause] [Music] thank you [Music] thank you

Channel: VICE

Views: 497,805

Keywords: documentary, documentaries, docs, interview, culture, lifestyle, world, exclusive, independent, underground, videos, journalism, vice guide, vice.com, vice, vice magazine, vice mag, vice videos, film, short films, movies, ghost lake, california floods, climate change, lost lake, disappearing lake, climate change documentary, ghost lake california, disappearing lakes around the world, tulare lake california

Id: ZDniDNY03JE

Length: 43min 55sec (2635 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 25 2023