| Riverside County, CA | March 2, 2004 Election |
 |
"...An Artifical Ecosystem Gone Haywire..."By Dennis LockhartCandidate for United States Representative; District 45; Democratic Party |
This information is provided by the candidate | |
The Salton Sea is the result of an accident that happened when man tried to change Nature. It was a mistake then and it is a mistake now.The Salton Sea is dying. It is dying not because it is devoid of life, but because it is too full of life. Organisms devour the oxygen, and fish die. Botulism in the fish then kills the birds who eat them. As Science Magazine so correctly stated in its April, 1999 issue, the Salton Sea is "...an artificial ecosystem gone haywire". The key word here is "artificial". The Salton Sea is not supposed to be there. It was created by an accident while water was being diverted from the Colorado River to farmers in the Imperial Valley in 1906. It took sixteen months to fill the Salton Sink with fresh water and less than eighty years to make it saltier than the Pacific Ocean. This is because the Salton Sink is essentially a natural catch-basin for the Colorado River whenever it overflows, which is has done on numerous occasions over the centuries. But these were accidents of nature, and the water soon evaporated, and over thousands of years salt eventually collected in the ground--hence the name Salton Sink. Because of the shallow depth of the Salton Sea--no more than fifty feet deep at its lowest point--when water on the surface evaporates, water from below, with salt from the bed, rises to the top. That is an ongoing problem that no amount of environmental engineering can change. Nor should we try to change it. Everything in nature happens for a reason. The Salton Sea is changing because it is supposed to. It should be our job not to spend untold hours and hundreds of millions--perhaps billions--of dollars trying to forestall the inevitable, but to work with nature. We can accomplish that only by resisting the impulse to force our own solutions on the Salton Sea, and instead try to understand what is happening and why. In the words of one environmental planner, the Salton Sea would become "...not a dead lake, but a different lake." The attempts to engineer the Salton Sea to our own specifications is as ill-advised financially as it is environmentally. Money that could go to other more worthwhile projects in the District goes instead to yet another study or new idea to solve the Salton Sea problem. An example of this would be the $6.5 million that came to the District last summer from Congress, $5.5 million of which went to the Salton Sea, and only $1 million went to a flood project in Murietta. I do not believe that the Salton Sea is five and-a-half times more important than a flood project in Murietta. I would have reversed the numbers, if anything. And if the Murietta flood project did not need all the money, I am certain there are other similar projects in the District that could have put the money to good use. Ambulance service in Pine Cove in the Idylwild area, for example, is being threatened. That Salton Sea money--actually, only a small portion of it--would have taken care of that problem for years to come. How many other worthwhile, much more important projects in the District are either under-funded or completely ignored while the Salton Sea continues to be a money pit for federal money to this District? We cannot ignore the Salton Sea--it is too important--but neither can we allow it to take money better suited to other projects in the District. We can still take care of the Salton Sea, with less foolhardly plans and a lot less money. |
Candidate Page
|| Feedback to Candidate
|| This Contest
March 2004 Home (Ballot Lookup)
|| About Smart Voter
ca/state Created from information supplied by the candidate: January 21, 2004 04:32
Smart Voter <http://www.smartvoter.org/>
Copyright © League of Women Voters of California Education Fund.
The League of Women Voters neither supports nor opposes candidates for public office or political parties.