California’s Growing Water Crisis

California’s Salton Sea is disappearing. So why isn’t the government doing more to stop it?

Kay Brown talks with Susan St. Louis of the Salton Sea Coalition about the growing environmental and public-health crisis—and the political roadblocks standing in the way of a real solution.

Who is responsible? Who has the power to act? And what will it cost California if the government continues to do nothing?

California’s Salton Sea isn’t just shrinking — it’s unspooling a public-health and climate mess right in front of us. I sat down with Susan St. Louis from the Salton Sea Coalition and she walked me through what’s happening: a once-vast inland sea fed by the Colorado River is evaporating, leaving behind toxic playa that blows into neighborhoods, stinks like rotten eggs, and worsens asthma, nosebleeds, cardiovascular and pulmonary issues. We laid out the science plainly — methane emissions from exposed lake bed, filthy inflows, and a salt concentration that turns the Sea into something closer to a chemical stew than a habitat. You’ll get why this isn’t just an ugly smell; it’s a regional public-health emergency and a climate accelerator that’ll bite more people if nothing changes. So what’s the fix? Susan argues — and we pretty much agree — that patchwork mitigation (hay bales, shallow polluted ponds) is a Band-Aid on a hemorrhage. The coalition’s big ask: import ocean water (Sea of Cortez or Pacific), desalinate it, and refill the lake — build canals, reuse geothermal infrastructure, and even leverage lithium extraction to offset costs. We also dug into the money talk: vendor proposals once estimated $1–4 billion, but a state panel ballooned that to $70 billion without clear basis. That mismatch, plus an alphabet soup of agencies and appointed decision-makers, is why the project isn’t moving. Bottom line for you: this is solvable technically, but it’s getting strangled by politics and short-term thinking.

Companies mentioned in this episode:

• Salton Sea Coalition
• Salton Sea Conservancy
• California Natural Resources Agency
• California Department of Water Resources
• California Department of Fish and Wildlife
• California State Water Resources Control Board
• U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
• Salton Sea Management Program
• U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
• United America Network

Mentioned in this episode:

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