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The Sierra Club is suing a powerful California water agency over a deal designed to help save the Colorado River—because the agreement will increase the drying of the Salton Sea, which is itself a growing environmental disaster.
Under the water conservation agreement, the Imperial Irrigation District, which holds some of the most senior water rights in California, will try to reduce its use of Colorado River water by 750,000 acre feet over the next three years. In exchange, farmers will get more than $600 million from the Bureau of Reclamation. But the Bureau of Reclamation's environmental assessment of the deal found the cutbacks will also reduce the amount of water flowing into the Salton Sea, leaving behind a toxic mess that becomes airborne as the water evaporates.
Sierra Club's legal challenge claims that the water district didn't do a full analysis of the Colorado River deal under California's Environmental Quality Act, and that reducing flows to the Salton Sea will put nearby residents in greater danger of breathing the toxic dust. School children in nearby towns already suffer from high rates of asthma.
As KPBS reports, the Salton Sea has no natural rivers that feed into it. The "sea" is itself an accident, created in 1905 when floodwaters breached an irrigation canal. It is refilled only by runoff from nearby farms, which has led to increasing salinity and toxicity in the waters. The irrigation district says the state of California has responsibility to restore the sea.
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Allowing the Colorado River to flow freely through Glen Canyon was a radical idea in the 1990s, but the opposite is true today. Climate change and steady water demand in the Southwest have shown us that the Glen Canyon Dam, instead of being a boon to water users, is part of the problem. Modifying the dam would give water managers greater flexibility in dry years, and it would allow Glen Canyon to continue its ecological rebirth.”
