WEBVTT - Eco-Disasters 101: The Salton Sea 0:00:01.480 --> 0:00:04.960 Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:11.119 --> 0:00:13.600 Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's 0:00:13.720 --> 0:00:16.720 Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is stuff you 0:00:16.760 --> 0:00:19.680 should know. It's a little bit of a jazzy Orth 0:00:19.760 --> 0:00:20.520 Science edition. 0:00:20.760 --> 0:00:24.360 I think, yeah, And I mean, we might as well 0:00:24.360 --> 0:00:26.320 get into it because I just told Jerry the name 0:00:26.360 --> 0:00:31.080 of this was Sultan Lake. And even though it's called 0:00:31.120 --> 0:00:35.920 the Salton Sea, right, which is a it's an inland 0:00:36.000 --> 0:00:40.320 lake in Imperial and Coachella Valleys and Riverside and Imperial 0:00:40.360 --> 0:00:44.479 County in California, southern California. But and I said, it's 0:00:44.560 --> 0:00:46.919 not really a sea, and you said it's an endless sea. 0:00:47.000 --> 0:00:48.240 Then he said save it. 0:00:48.920 --> 0:00:51.919 And said this is gold. I didn't say save it 0:00:52.000 --> 0:00:52.320 like that. 0:00:53.040 --> 0:00:55.880 Well, no, I mean, I'm not gonna do my Josh impression. 0:00:57.120 --> 0:00:59.280 You just did a really mean Josh impression. 0:00:59.720 --> 0:01:02.960 Save it? No, no, no, I guess we need to 0:01:03.000 --> 0:01:05.640 determine this. Why do they call it a sea? 0:01:05.800 --> 0:01:08.039 I mean it's an inland sea. I don't know. I 0:01:08.160 --> 0:01:10.080 just know that most people call it that. I failed 0:01:10.080 --> 0:01:12.680 to go look up whether it is a sea or lake. 0:01:13.800 --> 0:01:16.560 I mean, I don't think it has any outlet to 0:01:16.720 --> 0:01:17.760 the ocean anymore. 0:01:17.840 --> 0:01:20.880 Right, No, not anymore. We're going to talk about that. 0:01:21.120 --> 0:01:23.880 Well, that makes it a lake, save it. I think 0:01:23.920 --> 0:01:27.800 that's see, I nailed it. I think that's the difference 0:01:27.840 --> 0:01:29.600 between a sea and a lake. I think a lake 0:01:29.680 --> 0:01:33.160 has no outlet to the ocean and a sea does. Oh, 0:01:33.520 --> 0:01:35.680 if I'm not mistaken, I might be wrong about that. 0:01:35.720 --> 0:01:36.600 I didn't look it up. 0:01:36.480 --> 0:01:39.080 But I think California has a lot of work to do. 0:01:39.120 --> 0:01:41.440 They need to go rewrite all their pamphlets and update 0:01:41.480 --> 0:01:44.840 their websites and all that stuff. It's now the Saltan Lake. 0:01:45.360 --> 0:01:47.880 Well, now all their pamphlets just say don't even bother 0:01:47.960 --> 0:01:51.240 coming here, right to the Sultan Sea. That is not 0:01:51.280 --> 0:01:51.880 a California. 0:01:51.880 --> 0:01:54.600 I love California exactly. And the reason that they would 0:01:54.640 --> 0:01:57.480 have pamphlets that say don't come here is because the 0:01:57.520 --> 0:02:02.720 Salt and Sea is a genuine an ecological disaster. Yeah, 0:02:02.920 --> 0:02:06.400 human made it every step of the way. And it's 0:02:06.440 --> 0:02:09.960 got a really interesting history too. It's just a good 0:02:10.000 --> 0:02:12.720 all around topic if you ask me. Plus, it was 0:02:12.800 --> 0:02:16.440 a Soso movie starring Val Kilmer back in the you know, 0:02:16.560 --> 0:02:18.480 late nineties or early two thousands. 0:02:18.880 --> 0:02:20.840 I think it was early two thousands. It was okay, 0:02:21.160 --> 0:02:21.640 I saw it. 0:02:22.680 --> 0:02:25.560 The extra supporting character was meth. 0:02:26.320 --> 0:02:31.280 Yeah, it was very messy. Yeah, I've been here, by 0:02:31.280 --> 0:02:34.240 the way, I was wondering that. Yeah. On on my 0:02:34.240 --> 0:02:36.600 big out West trip many years ago after college, where 0:02:36.639 --> 0:02:39.960 I spent several months driving around with my best friend Brett, 0:02:41.040 --> 0:02:44.880 we went through the Salt and Sea and it wasn't 0:02:44.880 --> 0:02:47.160 great back then. Imagine it's well, it sounds like it's 0:02:47.200 --> 0:02:50.359 even worse now. But when did we talk about this before? 0:02:50.560 --> 0:02:51.600 Was it desertification? 0:02:52.440 --> 0:02:56.200 Oh? Maybe, because I know we've talked about that doesn't 0:02:56.280 --> 0:02:58.160 ring a bell, but I mean so much. 0:02:58.120 --> 0:03:00.320 So that I was convinced we did a whole upisode. 0:03:00.360 --> 0:03:02.880 But it could have been one of our ill can 0:03:02.880 --> 0:03:04.560 see videos that we used to do. 0:03:04.760 --> 0:03:07.960 That's possible too, because I think I could see us 0:03:08.000 --> 0:03:10.160 taking the angle that there were ghost towns there. 0:03:10.760 --> 0:03:13.519 Oh, okay, you know ghost towns there are. 0:03:13.600 --> 0:03:15.320 There's a lot of ghost towns there is. We'll see 0:03:15.360 --> 0:03:19.600 the area was once quite developed, and for good reasons. Again, 0:03:19.639 --> 0:03:24.480 as we'll see, people largely abandoned this area. But let's 0:03:24.480 --> 0:03:26.520 talk about how the Salt and Sea even came to be, 0:03:26.520 --> 0:03:30.000 because that is an interesting story in and of itself. 0:03:30.360 --> 0:03:33.440 Yeah, it totally is. It's in the Salton Basin and 0:03:33.480 --> 0:03:36.080 that's Sa L t O N by the way, right, 0:03:36.480 --> 0:03:41.000 and that is a very large trough, just sort of 0:03:41.000 --> 0:03:45.560 a natural geological trough that led into at one point 0:03:45.640 --> 0:03:48.839 the Gulf of California. But it was there were other 0:03:48.920 --> 0:03:51.480 seas before this sea or lakes, if you want to 0:03:51.480 --> 0:03:52.160 go that route. 0:03:52.360 --> 0:03:54.680 Yeah. From the oldest I saw is that we have 0:03:54.840 --> 0:03:59.160 geological evidence of inland seas or lakes depending on your definition, 0:04:00.320 --> 0:04:03.440 going back at least forty thousand years, and that it 0:04:03.480 --> 0:04:07.000 was almost cyclical. There'd be a lake that was there 0:04:07.040 --> 0:04:09.040 for a few hundred years and it would dry up 0:04:09.160 --> 0:04:12.240 or flow out to the Gulf of California, and then 0:04:12.520 --> 0:04:15.600 it would happen again a couple centuries later. And the 0:04:15.640 --> 0:04:18.480 thing that made it happen was the Colorado River, which 0:04:18.520 --> 0:04:22.279 flows to the east along the border of California, Nevada 0:04:22.279 --> 0:04:25.960 and California and Arizona down into I guess the Gulf 0:04:25.960 --> 0:04:27.159 of California, right. 0:04:28.040 --> 0:04:28.760 Are you asking me? 0:04:29.279 --> 0:04:29.919 I think so. 0:04:29.920 --> 0:04:30.000 So. 0:04:30.040 --> 0:04:34.080 That would make the Colorado River a sea, but it 0:04:34.160 --> 0:04:36.240 flows into there and every once in a while there's 0:04:36.279 --> 0:04:38.160 a lot of snow melt, there's a lot of rain, 0:04:38.320 --> 0:04:41.239 and the Colorado River will flood its bank so much 0:04:41.680 --> 0:04:44.960 that a bunch of it gets diverted into the Saltan basin, 0:04:45.320 --> 0:04:47.320 forming one of the salt and seas. 0:04:47.360 --> 0:04:50.480 Over time, Yeah, for a while, Like you said, you know, 0:04:50.960 --> 0:04:52.760 it could be there for a while, and eventually it's 0:04:52.800 --> 0:04:54.440 on the middle of the desert, so eventually it's going 0:04:54.480 --> 0:04:57.760 to evaporate, right. But as the river flowed in there, 0:04:57.800 --> 0:05:01.760 it carried a lot of silts with it, and eventually 0:05:01.800 --> 0:05:05.320 that silt gummed up the outlet so it couldn't get anywhere, 0:05:05.400 --> 0:05:08.039 So there was a natural dam that was formed. And 0:05:08.600 --> 0:05:13.120 you know, it was, like you said, it was a 0:05:13.200 --> 0:05:16.599 lake for a long time. Sometimes it was a saltwater lake. 0:05:16.760 --> 0:05:19.360 Sometimes the heat would dry it out and evaporate it 0:05:19.880 --> 0:05:22.440 and it would just become a dry bed once again. 0:05:23.160 --> 0:05:27.279 And it was just kind of weird geological cyclelog I mean, 0:05:27.320 --> 0:05:30.400 I'm sure this has happened elsewhere, but it seems particularly 0:05:30.440 --> 0:05:31.479 noteworthy for this area. 0:05:31.640 --> 0:05:34.240 It does. It seems kind of unique, you know, yeah, 0:05:34.279 --> 0:05:38.799 I think so. There's also one of these lakes or seas. 0:05:38.839 --> 0:05:41.240 You'll like this one because they call it a lake 0:05:41.360 --> 0:05:46.040 Lake Kahuila, which formed about thirteen hundred years ago as 0:05:46.040 --> 0:05:49.320 well as geologists can tell, and it stuck around for 0:05:49.440 --> 0:05:53.240 hundreds of years, possibly up into the fifteen hundreds, and 0:05:53.320 --> 0:05:55.640 at one point in the fifteen hundreds it flooded, so 0:05:55.680 --> 0:05:59.360 it was already there, and it grew to about twenty 0:05:59.440 --> 0:06:02.400 six times the size of the Sultan Sea. Oh wow, 0:06:02.480 --> 0:06:04.960 which in and of itself that sounds pretty impressive. But 0:06:05.520 --> 0:06:07.640 I came up with a few comparisons for some of 0:06:07.640 --> 0:06:11.159 our listeners around the world. If I may sure, for 0:06:11.240 --> 0:06:14.080 our Northern listeners, that is larger than the size of 0:06:14.160 --> 0:06:14.800 Lake Erie. 0:06:15.240 --> 0:06:15.640 Okay. 0:06:16.040 --> 0:06:19.599 For our Canadian listeners, it's four times larger than the 0:06:19.640 --> 0:06:25.320 capital city of Ottawa. For European listeners, that's larger than Belgium. 0:06:25.640 --> 0:06:26.039 Okay. 0:06:26.520 --> 0:06:30.920 In the UK, that's bigger than Wales. In Australia, that's 0:06:31.000 --> 0:06:36.000 two times the greater Sydney metro area. And for our 0:06:36.040 --> 0:06:38.680 friends in California, that's twenty six times the size of 0:06:38.680 --> 0:06:39.440 the Sultan Sea. 0:06:39.960 --> 0:06:44.039 Wow, you did your homework, I did. Is there a 0:06:44.080 --> 0:06:47.799 program to use, like just like Josh converts dot com? 0:06:47.920 --> 0:06:50.320 There there are? 0:06:50.920 --> 0:06:51.120 Yeah. 0:06:51.160 --> 0:06:54.640 I make like twelve dollars a month on webed that's great. No, 0:06:54.680 --> 0:06:57.320 there's there's websites that says like they're called like the 0:06:57.440 --> 0:06:59.960 size of or something like that. So usually it's type 0:07:00.000 --> 0:07:03.440 it's been what's the size of ten thousand square miles? 0:07:03.440 --> 0:07:04.440 Which is what that would be? 0:07:04.880 --> 0:07:09.240 Is a landing page? Just a banana? Yeah, it starts 0:07:09.240 --> 0:07:09.600 from there. 0:07:09.920 --> 0:07:12.360 Yeah, Well where did that come from? Using a banana 0:07:12.400 --> 0:07:13.000 for scale? 0:07:13.040 --> 0:07:13.360 Do you know? 0:07:13.920 --> 0:07:14.240 Oh? 0:07:14.360 --> 0:07:16.200 I don't know. I never I mean, who starts any 0:07:16.240 --> 0:07:17.040 of these things? 0:07:17.280 --> 0:07:19.120 Okay, I didn't know if it was something that you 0:07:19.160 --> 0:07:21.360 had kind of brought up or something. Because I know 0:07:21.480 --> 0:07:23.360 this stuff. You should know. Army is crazy for that. 0:07:23.720 --> 0:07:26.280 No, it's just an internet thing, you know. Okay, So 0:07:26.800 --> 0:07:28.160 Ron's doing all of that stuff. 0:07:29.160 --> 0:07:32.160 Get all Ron. He comes up with the best memes. 0:07:33.040 --> 0:07:36.520 All right. So that was the cycle for thousands of years. 0:07:36.800 --> 0:07:40.080 Depositing that silt. One of the byproducts of that is 0:07:40.120 --> 0:07:44.400 it made that soil very rich and stuff could really 0:07:44.400 --> 0:07:47.640 grow on it if it rained ever, which it doesn't. 0:07:48.160 --> 0:07:51.800 So that was a problem, and irrigation's going to solve 0:07:51.800 --> 0:07:55.400 that problem. So in the early nineteen hundreds, the Imperial 0:07:55.440 --> 0:07:58.480 Canal was built to say, hey, let's divert some of 0:07:58.480 --> 0:08:02.160 that Colorado River to so we can have drinking water, 0:08:02.200 --> 0:08:05.560 and so we can irrigate this rich, rich soil that 0:08:05.680 --> 0:08:09.520 lies beneath our feet. And they completed it, and you know, 0:08:09.640 --> 0:08:13.280 it was pretty good, but that same silt is going 0:08:13.320 --> 0:08:15.760 to keep clogging up even you know, kind of any 0:08:15.840 --> 0:08:18.720 moving body of water, and that eventually happened to the canal, 0:08:18.920 --> 0:08:21.480 like in a bad way, not too long after they opened. 0:08:21.200 --> 0:08:24.280 It, No, just in a couple of years, and this 0:08:24.360 --> 0:08:27.080 one clog was so bad that they were like, we're 0:08:27.120 --> 0:08:28.880 not going to get rid of this anytime soon. So 0:08:29.080 --> 0:08:32.760 they dug a bypass around it, you know, yeah, which 0:08:32.800 --> 0:08:34.880 makes sense, it's smart, and they just expected it to 0:08:34.960 --> 0:08:37.240 last like a couple of months until they cleaned that 0:08:37.720 --> 0:08:41.320 silt deposit out and could go back to the original canal. 0:08:41.400 --> 0:08:43.800 The problem was, because they thought it was going to 0:08:43.840 --> 0:08:48.480 be temporary, they didn't install the proper headgates. Headgates control 0:08:48.559 --> 0:08:51.720 the flow of water in a canal, so that means 0:08:51.760 --> 0:08:55.719 that the water in that bypass was literally out of control. 0:08:56.040 --> 0:08:59.040 Which was fine. They dug it well enough that under 0:08:59.080 --> 0:09:04.200 normal circumstances, as the water was flowing normally, But the 0:09:04.440 --> 0:09:08.160 year after they dug that bypass, it stayed around longer 0:09:08.200 --> 0:09:11.520 than expected, and the year after there were some genuinely 0:09:11.559 --> 0:09:15.360 abnormal circumstances that caused a huge problem for everybody. 0:09:15.840 --> 0:09:19.199 Yeah, it rained a lot, a big rainy season and 0:09:19.240 --> 0:09:21.720 then you know, snow melt and the rockies can always 0:09:21.760 --> 0:09:23.840 be a problem if it was extra, and that year 0:09:23.840 --> 0:09:27.520 it was extra. Coinciding with those rains, the Colorado River 0:09:28.160 --> 0:09:32.720 swoll up again and it, you know, did what water does. 0:09:33.000 --> 0:09:36.760 It goes down river in a pretty impactful way and 0:09:37.000 --> 0:09:39.920 really overwhelmed that temporary channel that they were using to 0:09:39.960 --> 0:09:43.480 divert around the cloud Canal. It carved it. It just 0:09:43.520 --> 0:09:48.199 made it bigger and deeper, and eventually it started overflowing 0:09:48.360 --> 0:09:51.520 into that salt and sink and just became one big 0:09:51.559 --> 0:09:52.240 body of water. 0:09:52.679 --> 0:09:56.760 Yeah, So essentially Colorado River decided I'll go this way instead, 0:09:57.000 --> 0:10:00.320 So it actually changed its course from the the way 0:10:00.320 --> 0:10:03.280 that it had been going for millennia to this way 0:10:03.320 --> 0:10:06.600 directly into the salt and sea, and it started flowing 0:10:06.640 --> 0:10:10.840 so fast that ninety thousand cubic feet of water per 0:10:11.000 --> 0:10:14.640 second was flowing into the salt and sea. Right That 0:10:14.760 --> 0:10:18.280 is the size of an Olympic sized pool. That much 0:10:18.360 --> 0:10:20.680 water flowing in every second. 0:10:21.760 --> 0:10:25.080 Yeah, and for our friends in the north, that's an 0:10:25.120 --> 0:10:28.640 Olympic size pool, right, and I'm not going to keep. 0:10:28.559 --> 0:10:31.000 Going, Well, what about our friends who like McDonald's. 0:10:31.760 --> 0:10:34.240 Oh, I mean, if you did a big mac conversion, 0:10:34.280 --> 0:10:36.199 that's really going the extra mile. 0:10:36.679 --> 0:10:39.920 It is exactly two million, two hundred and ninety five thousand, 0:10:40.040 --> 0:10:43.360 nine hundred and eighteen big macs all flowing into the 0:10:43.520 --> 0:10:45.360 salt and sea per second. 0:10:45.640 --> 0:10:46.480 So delicious. 0:10:46.640 --> 0:10:49.240 It does seem delicious, But imagine them all kind of 0:10:49.520 --> 0:10:52.520 flowing at once and smacking into another probably get kind 0:10:52.520 --> 0:10:53.000 of gross. 0:10:53.080 --> 0:10:55.120 Yeah, pretty gross. So, I mean that happened for a 0:10:55.120 --> 0:10:58.400 couple of years, and they tried to redirect the river. 0:10:58.880 --> 0:11:01.600 It was a pretty expensive proposition. It was a pretty 0:11:01.640 --> 0:11:05.640 frantic thing. The US government got involved, the Southern Pacific 0:11:05.720 --> 0:11:09.560 Railroad got involved. They fully sealed it in nineteen oh seven. 0:11:09.640 --> 0:11:13.560 But that's like what three years later, and you know, 0:11:13.640 --> 0:11:15.320 by that point it's too late. They're like, all, right, now, 0:11:15.360 --> 0:11:19.480 we got a four hundred square mile inland sea or lake, 0:11:19.520 --> 0:11:22.080 depending on who's podcasting many years from now, right. 0:11:22.559 --> 0:11:24.640 Yeah. The way that they sealed it, the Union Pacific 0:11:24.760 --> 0:11:27.600 Railroad because their lines were threatened. They're like, we better 0:11:27.679 --> 0:11:30.800 do something because these government yokels have no idea what 0:11:30.920 --> 0:11:34.319 to do, and so apparently it took two They built 0:11:34.320 --> 0:11:37.679 a trestle across the river to install a dam made 0:11:37.720 --> 0:11:40.720 of twenty fifty seven car loads of rock, two hundred 0:11:40.720 --> 0:11:43.120 and twenty one car loads of gravel, and two hundred 0:11:43.160 --> 0:11:46.439 and three carloads of clay, all dumped into one spot 0:11:46.640 --> 0:11:49.160 to finally fill that breach. That's what it took. That's 0:11:49.160 --> 0:11:50.600 how big of a breach it was? 0:11:51.040 --> 0:11:53.160 How many big banks A lot? 0:11:54.480 --> 0:12:00.360 I didn't do that one. Sorry, it's okayoud we take 0:12:00.360 --> 0:12:00.720 a break now? 0:12:00.800 --> 0:12:03.080 Or is that a should we? It seems like a 0:12:03.080 --> 0:12:03.840 good time for a break. 0:12:04.080 --> 0:12:07.400 Yeah, the Sultan Sea is now there, the breach has 0:12:07.480 --> 0:12:10.360 been sealed, and people are saying, what the heck are 0:12:10.400 --> 0:12:11.280 we gonna do with this? 0:12:12.080 --> 0:12:14.880 Yeah, we're gonna water ski eventually. So we'll come back 0:12:14.920 --> 0:12:16.240 and talk about that right after. 0:12:16.000 --> 0:12:24.439 This learning stuff from Josh stuff you shoult No. 0:12:26.480 --> 0:12:33.760 Lately I've been learning some stop about insomnia or aluminia. 0:12:33.840 --> 0:12:37.439 How about the one on border like disorder? 0:12:37.920 --> 0:12:39.480 That are your order? 0:12:40.320 --> 0:12:41.320 That one before? 0:12:41.600 --> 0:12:48.080 But it was so nice, honest, Why except everybody listen. 0:12:47.960 --> 0:12:55.520 Up shot, stop stop. 0:12:55.600 --> 0:12:56.320 Stop. 0:13:00.040 --> 0:13:04.479 All right. So when we last left you, human experimentation 0:13:04.600 --> 0:13:08.960 and sort of error and rain and snow melt caused 0:13:09.000 --> 0:13:13.319 a four hundred square mile almost thirty five mile long 0:13:13.360 --> 0:13:17.280 and fifteen mile wide, about thirty foot deep on average 0:13:17.360 --> 0:13:21.760 lake to form in the middle of the California Desert 0:13:22.000 --> 0:13:25.320 because it's where it was. Eventually, if humankind had not 0:13:25.720 --> 0:13:29.080 intruded once again, it probably would have eventually just completely 0:13:29.120 --> 0:13:33.480 evaporate like it had been doing for millennia. But like 0:13:33.520 --> 0:13:36.560 we mentioned, that, soil is good stuff. So they started 0:13:36.880 --> 0:13:40.600 to build, you know, farmland out there and irrigate that land. 0:13:41.240 --> 0:13:43.520 And what do you do when you irrigate stuff, You 0:13:43.600 --> 0:13:47.199 got to have runoff. And so they're running this irrigation 0:13:47.760 --> 0:13:51.079 water off into the lake, which basically it's like, hey, 0:13:51.520 --> 0:13:54.600 we're putting at least as much water as you're evaporating, 0:13:54.840 --> 0:13:55.960 so you're not going anywhere. 0:13:56.640 --> 0:13:59.920 No, Yeah, that's right. So it stabilized the lake in Deafen, 0:14:00.400 --> 0:14:04.360 just the agricultural run off. One of the other things 0:14:04.440 --> 0:14:06.800 that the other impacts that this had because they started 0:14:06.800 --> 0:14:09.800 doing that in the twenties, is that agricultural runoff as 0:14:09.920 --> 0:14:12.679 chalk full of salt, which I didn't realize, but this 0:14:13.000 --> 0:14:15.959 irrigation produces a lot of salt, and that stuff was 0:14:16.000 --> 0:14:21.560 flowing right into the Saltan and it turned it salty. Today, 0:14:21.880 --> 0:14:26.400 I saw anywhere between one third or fifty percent more 0:14:26.440 --> 0:14:29.680 salty than the Pacific Ocean. The salt and Sea has 0:14:29.760 --> 0:14:33.040 become because of all that introduction. So it started freshwater, 0:14:33.400 --> 0:14:36.120 and then because of agricultural runoff, it turned into a 0:14:36.240 --> 0:14:38.560 salt water inland sea slash lake. 0:14:39.080 --> 0:14:42.800 That's right. And because it's located along the Pacific Flyway, 0:14:42.840 --> 0:14:47.200 which is a great migratory bird route, the birds are like, hey, 0:14:47.280 --> 0:14:50.840 this is great. Now there's water here. The locals were like, 0:14:50.960 --> 0:14:53.560 we should put some fish in here, so they stocked 0:14:53.560 --> 0:14:56.880 it with tilapia, a lot of tilapia and sportfish for 0:14:57.000 --> 0:14:59.680 sport fishing, and of course that the birds love that 0:14:59.760 --> 0:15:03.040 even more. So, all of a sudden, by the nineteen thirties, 0:15:03.840 --> 0:15:07.560 you have a sort of a brand new wildlife refuge forming, 0:15:08.280 --> 0:15:10.920 such that the US Fish and Wildlife Service even created 0:15:10.960 --> 0:15:14.680 the Saltan Sea Wildlife Refuge to protect all the stuff 0:15:14.680 --> 0:15:15.360 that was there. Now. 0:15:15.680 --> 0:15:18.240 Yeah, so when the Sultan Sea first formed, everybody's like, 0:15:18.480 --> 0:15:21.160 this is actually kind of great. This is a mistake 0:15:21.200 --> 0:15:25.640 that turned really wonderful for everybody. We turned river water 0:15:25.720 --> 0:15:29.320 into lemonade. In other words, that's right. So there are 0:15:29.360 --> 0:15:31.720 some other weird things that didn't make it, but that 0:15:31.840 --> 0:15:35.800 were introduced flamingos, which I guess aren't that weird. But 0:15:36.120 --> 0:15:40.280 a guy introduced sea lions too at one point, and 0:15:40.280 --> 0:15:43.320 they were accused of stealing pigs in the area. But 0:15:43.400 --> 0:15:46.840 the guy who introduced sea lions in flamingos, he had 0:15:46.840 --> 0:15:50.720 a legendary restaurant out on an island in the middle 0:15:50.760 --> 0:15:54.240 of the Salton Sea called Mullet Island, which is actually 0:15:54.320 --> 0:15:57.880 just sitting atop a dormant volcano. It's very important to 0:15:57.920 --> 0:16:02.040 remember this for later. It's a dormant but not extinct volcano. 0:16:02.120 --> 0:16:05.080 It's just kind of sitting there, chilling, waiting to go up. 0:16:05.680 --> 0:16:09.880 That's right. And you know, once you have flamingos, you're 0:16:09.880 --> 0:16:11.440 going to have people because people want to go see 0:16:11.440 --> 0:16:15.040 this flamingos. So by the nineteen fifties, developers had come 0:16:15.040 --> 0:16:18.040 along and turned it into what they called the California 0:16:18.160 --> 0:16:21.560 Riviera or the Saltan Riviera or Palm Springs by the Sea, 0:16:22.000 --> 0:16:25.000 and it's exactly what you think. It's tiki bars, it's 0:16:25.080 --> 0:16:28.920 restaurants had a very Palm springsy vibe, like you know, 0:16:29.040 --> 0:16:33.400 Elvis performed there, Frank Sinatra performed there. They had you know, 0:16:33.640 --> 0:16:37.360 I wasn't kidding about the water skiing. They people yachted, 0:16:37.360 --> 0:16:40.600 people swam. It was just a big recreation area out 0:16:40.600 --> 0:16:42.320 there in the middle of the desert in you know, 0:16:42.400 --> 0:16:44.840 southern California. They were like, yeah, we'll take another one 0:16:44.880 --> 0:16:47.200 of these. We got plenty of people around, right, and 0:16:47.360 --> 0:16:49.480 Palm Springs gets a little crowded, So now we have 0:16:49.600 --> 0:16:52.640 this beautiful Inland Sea Lake. Yeah. 0:16:52.680 --> 0:16:56.560 People started building vacation homes there. There were very famous 0:16:56.560 --> 0:16:59.800 speedboat races that were held there every year. At one 0:16:59.800 --> 0:17:02.960 point point, some developers sunk two million dollars in nineteen 0:17:03.080 --> 0:17:07.560 sixty money into building the North Shore Beach and Yacht Club, 0:17:07.800 --> 0:17:11.119 which became basically the crown jewel of the Salton Sea area. 0:17:12.000 --> 0:17:15.120 There were postcards that said greetings from the Salton Sea. 0:17:15.480 --> 0:17:17.600 There was a Bombay Beach resident, Who's. 0:17:17.400 --> 0:17:18.480 Going to get postcards? 0:17:18.680 --> 0:17:19.560 They had postcards? 0:17:19.640 --> 0:17:21.720 Swear they did. They sell shotglasses. 0:17:22.200 --> 0:17:26.879 I yes, there was a Spencer's Gifts on the Sultan 0:17:26.960 --> 0:17:30.520 Sea in the sixties. All right, you could also get 0:17:30.520 --> 0:17:33.760 a Bitch and Grateful Dead poster and a LaToya Jackson 0:17:33.800 --> 0:17:34.840 and Lingerie poster. 0:17:35.320 --> 0:17:38.399 Right is Shenna Lambeau. 0:17:40.200 --> 0:17:41.280 I know that's Garfield. 0:17:41.400 --> 0:17:41.880 Okay. 0:17:42.680 --> 0:17:45.440 So there was this Bombay Beach resident, which is one 0:17:45.440 --> 0:17:49.080 of the little party towns on the Saltan Sea, and 0:17:49.119 --> 0:17:51.200 it's still there. There's something like three hundred and fifty 0:17:51.200 --> 0:17:52.840 people that lived there. But he said, back in the 0:17:52.920 --> 0:17:55.280 day it was like a spring Break party all the time. 0:17:56.760 --> 0:17:59.359 The problem was the Salton Sea. As much fun as 0:17:59.400 --> 0:18:02.800 people were having on it, it was this ticking environmental 0:18:02.800 --> 0:18:06.640 time bomb just growing underneath their water skis essentially day 0:18:06.680 --> 0:18:09.840 by day. And so finally in around the seventies it 0:18:09.880 --> 0:18:13.280 became clear that the salt and seas glitz was starting 0:18:13.280 --> 0:18:17.600 to weih off and there was rotten big max underneath. 0:18:18.280 --> 0:18:19.480 Do you know I thought you were going to lead 0:18:19.520 --> 0:18:21.399 it in with when you said the problem is I 0:18:21.400 --> 0:18:23.560 thought you were going to say, is it spring break 0:18:23.720 --> 0:18:25.080 is not meant to last forever? 0:18:25.400 --> 0:18:28.240 Oh, that's a great one. Let's go back and edit 0:18:28.280 --> 0:18:31.680 that in just a note. Okay, there'll be no context, 0:18:31.760 --> 0:18:33.359 You'll just add it in and then we'll leave the 0:18:33.400 --> 0:18:35.800 part where you suggested into I agree. 0:18:36.440 --> 0:18:39.520 Uh yeah, so yeah, things will go downhill pretty quickly. 0:18:40.160 --> 0:18:41.920 You know. I hope we've hammered home enough that this 0:18:41.920 --> 0:18:44.400 thing just sort of appeared because of people, and it's 0:18:44.400 --> 0:18:46.120 out in the middle of the desert and it's not 0:18:46.160 --> 0:18:49.000 supposed it wasn't supposed to be there really, so obviously 0:18:49.040 --> 0:18:52.080 it's not going to rain, so that's not going to 0:18:52.320 --> 0:18:54.840 fill that thing back up. They had that agricultural runoff 0:18:54.880 --> 0:18:56.760 for many years, but as we'll see, that would end 0:18:56.840 --> 0:19:01.200 up being a big part of the problem. Yeahments would flood, 0:19:01.720 --> 0:19:05.280 you know, because they were building, you know, lakeside properties 0:19:05.320 --> 0:19:09.600 and stuff like that. So you know, whenever you try 0:19:09.640 --> 0:19:11.920 to intrude I feel like and build a big natural 0:19:11.960 --> 0:19:14.360 thing out where there probably wasn't supposed to be one. 0:19:14.560 --> 0:19:16.800 I feel like, it usually goes south like this in 0:19:16.840 --> 0:19:17.200 some way. 0:19:17.440 --> 0:19:21.800 Yeah, it hubris. Yeah, So yeah, that runoff would sometimes 0:19:21.800 --> 0:19:23.840 flood the lake. There'd be so much of it, and 0:19:23.880 --> 0:19:27.040 those developments would flood. Like you were saying, the other 0:19:27.080 --> 0:19:29.480 problem with the runoff is that it not just salt. 0:19:29.520 --> 0:19:33.040 It brings lots of pesticides and fertilizers with it. And 0:19:33.080 --> 0:19:35.600 remember that there was no outlet for this lake, which 0:19:35.640 --> 0:19:37.680 made it a lake in the first place, so all 0:19:37.720 --> 0:19:41.520 of this toxic water didn't have anywhere to go, right, 0:19:41.600 --> 0:19:45.159 it just stayed in the lake. Yeah, And anytime you 0:19:45.240 --> 0:19:49.400 have a lot of fertilizers introduced into a body of water, 0:19:49.480 --> 0:19:52.840 especially a warm one, you get algae blooms. You also 0:19:52.840 --> 0:19:57.840 get bacteria blooms. And when the algae decays, the microbes 0:19:57.840 --> 0:20:00.320 that eat it also suck up a lot of the 0:20:00.359 --> 0:20:03.119 oxygen in the water, and that kills off all the 0:20:03.119 --> 0:20:06.320 stuff that needs that oxygen, So it creates dead zones. 0:20:07.200 --> 0:20:11.399 And then even worse that bacteria that blooms, some kinds 0:20:11.440 --> 0:20:15.000 of it actually produce toxins that can do things like 0:20:15.160 --> 0:20:20.320 damage humans livers or their DNA or cause respiratory failure. 0:20:20.720 --> 0:20:23.720 So all this stuff is starting to like happen in 0:20:23.800 --> 0:20:27.399 the Sultan Sea starting in the seventies and eighties, and 0:20:27.560 --> 0:20:30.720 it's it's just becoming clear that there's problems that are 0:20:30.760 --> 0:20:34.080 starting to brew, like literally brewing within the salt and sea. 0:20:34.640 --> 0:20:38.760 Yeah, it's called utrification. And there are some pretty staggering 0:20:38.880 --> 0:20:41.119 and very sad statistics that we're going to kind of 0:20:41.200 --> 0:20:43.440 run through here as far as the die off, because 0:20:45.080 --> 0:20:47.240 you know, the fish die off, and then eventually because 0:20:47.240 --> 0:20:49.600 of the fish die off, the bird die off was 0:20:49.640 --> 0:20:54.040 really massive. This one is fairly staggering. Just over a 0:20:54.080 --> 0:20:57.280 five month period from December ninety one to April ninety two, 0:20:57.359 --> 0:21:01.760