Restoring the Salton Sea: An in-depth look at lithium, wetlands and the 10-year plan 

I love taking photos of the Salton Sea. I hope all the plans work to improve the area.

Thank you everyone!! Let’s hope we can change this beautiful body of water!!

Thank you for producing and posting this documentary.

Excellent, concise report on status and plans. I know we are all rooting for good solutions.

Good reporting. Thank you for producing this. Growing up in San Diego, my family enjoyed the vibrant Salton Sea back in the 60's and witnessed the beginning of it's decline in the 70's to present date. We still enjoy the surrounding Desert and Imperial Valley and we are encouraged with the plans the future holds for this wonderful natural resource.Combined - Helping our Our Wildlife, Improving Human Residency & Living Conditions + Recreational Enjoyment along with our GeoThermal - & growing Lithium Industry.... all can co-exist moving forward.

Thank you for news about the sea

I heard of a plan to build a 124-mile aqueduct from the Gulf of California to the Salton Sea. It would carry salt water. It would be a net downhill, with the Gulf being at sea level with tides, so it would flow into the Salton Sea. The flow would have to be regulated with no chance of an uncontrolled flow. The Sea's salinity would increase over time. I heard of another plan that would provide for simultaneous flow in the opposite direction, so that the Salton Sea would become essentially connected two-way with the ocean. It would require a lot of energy to pump the water uphill from the Sea to the ocean. If I were a billionaire and a little younger, I might try to do this and turn the Sea back into a resort and a good place to live. I would build an earthen dam to extract energy from the water falling from the Gulf and use that energy to power said pumps.

Olivia, your voice and cadence is amazing! Great news peace.

Team Audubon & everyone helping restore the sea!!! ❤😊

This was reporting at its finest. Great research and explanations. Kudos to the production team. My only suggestion is get rid of the chyron through the entire thing you're covering up 1/3 of everything that you produced.

Thanks Olivia, I live on the SS part time . Appreciate the thorough report. Such a complex problem with it drying up . I hope you can provide more reports in the future. Well done.

good job people... all lives matter!

Incredible journalism wonderful job!

Aral Sea in Kazakhstan has similar problem and is being addressed by increased plantings of Desert Tamarisk, called Saxaul. Can that tree be utilized for Salton or is it considered an invasive nuisance?

Appreciate

Basically all the water from the Colorado river has and is being extracted with virtually none reaching the gulf of California, and thus has severely impacted that area as well. Currently, the salton sea existence is owed to a man made blunder which diverted the Colorado river for a period of time. When that diversion was stopped, the sea started drying up. The diversion of the water supply for the Aral Sea resulted in it shrinking to less than 40% of its original size and has destroyed the economy of a massive region. The same thing happened to the Tulare lakes system in the San Fernando valley of California. And it’s also happening to lake walker in Nevada, the lake is shrinking and getting much saltier because of source water diversion. Basically, when you take away the water supply, lakes dry up and die. With long term consequences.

Restoring the Salton sea should be restored to its 1850 condition

And let’s remember, the San Andreas fault runs straight through this area, palm spring, etc. plan accordingly as in, do not create a dense population hub.

Great and informative news story! Thanks! With all the prospects of lithium and the money that will come from it, hopefully the "Sea to Sea" canal from th eSea of Cortez to the Salton Sea can be completed to address the toxic dust. The lithium companies could pay the Mexican government for the access rights for the canal. The canal could also benefit the Mexican economy in the area of the canal as the canal would provide good places for resort towns along it 🤷‍♂

What I thought California is all about no chemicals and no environmental damage. What happened? You can’t mandate organic firming in the area only?

An above ground pipe installs faster then a buried system. Nearest viable water source that's not the Colorado river?

They should build and aqueduct and pump sea water to refill the lake

I've heard many good stories about beavers being introduced into arid areas of the west to create more habitable areas for endangered species. Is this a possibility for the Salton Sea ?

What the microbiologist doesn't tell you is that the Salton Sea is above the San Andreas fault, and the weight of more water in the Salton Sea would put pressure on the San Andreas fault that is below it......then.....guess what happens when you put pressure on that earthquake fault.??!?!

I don' tknow why anyone would live there. I've stopped there coming back from Anza Borrego and the stench is unbearable. Where people live looks like dystopian ghetto's. There will be whole neighborhoods of destroyed abandoned houses then a house with someone living in it. There is so much garbage strewn around everywhere, graffiti on almost every building, yet people live there. The whole place should be condemned, it's toxic and a garbage dump. The water is full of agricultural fertilizers, pesticides and chemicals. I've heard talk for decades about how they are going to fix it. Never going to happen, it's too massive and the cost will be too much.

They don't have any trees like palm trees and different exotic trees like they have down there in Florida If they plant more of those kinds of trees and fertilize most of that valley and use the seawater to help all that grow then they will have that much of polluted air because it needs vegetation to grow Use the water to help it grow and fertilize it and use that water to help it grow more vegetation and that will solve your problems

A small petri dish of the world bio systems !

I guess it is obvious they won't restore the actual sea itself. So sad. Great report, however!

Radiation smell volcano great idea 👍😵‍💫🙃🤔💩💩

Ocean or polluted salt pond water can compete with lithium, oil, natural gas, hydro electricity or solar wind energy. The @EirexTech is 5 year old Canadian company that utilized prehistoric cavitation technology releasing highly competitive hydrogen from any type of water including waste plastic saturated with ocean water for cheap synthetic fuels. The effort to restore the Salton Sea, Laguna Salada and Death Valley with endless sources of ocean water will increase monsoonal moisture and rainfall for Colorado Basin. The old fashioned salt water desalination or electrolysis of water for hydrogen generation can't be compared to cavitation by Eirex Tech in Canada.

Mississippi WEST spring flooding water to Colorado river !!!!

Desalination sea of Cortes

All due respect they all look so clueless in that valley All they have to do is to create a boring pipeline through that whole valley and used majority of that water from the sea to fertilize everything and plant trees and use cow manure to grow more vegetation and have that water keep flowing through there and create more vegetation and keep fertilizing that whole valley all the way up to death valley if they were very smart with this because they Should have done this two decades ago They wouldn't have these problems

it's not a sea...

The off road vehicles tear up the ground and send dust everywhere!

To me San Diego and Imperial are like the most mystical parts of Southern California 🌬️ Together they make the 'Imperial Saints' 🤴💪

it is toxic, very toxic and has taken way too many lives of wildlife & dogs, our dog as well. Do NOT go there at all. Stay Away!

Slab City

Restore Lake Tulare instead. How about restore the largest natural lake in California rather than restoring a man made lake created by an industrial accident.

Good job. If you can bring back boating, etc you can collect money from boaters to fix the sea.

You can't fix the salton sea when there is a volcano under it causing most of the problems

You can build trails and parks but I doubt anyone is going to come knowing the health effects caused by the Salton sea. Imagine if California piped all the run off from all these atmospheric rivers to the Salton sea. Problem solved!