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Eco-Disasters 101: The Salton Sea · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is stuff you
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: should know. It's a little bit of a jazzy Orth
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: Science edition.
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: I think, yeah, And I mean, we might as well
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: get into it because I just told Jerry the name
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: of this was Sultan Lake. And even though it's called
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: the Salton Sea, right, which is a it's an inland
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: lake in Imperial and Coachella Valleys and Riverside and Imperial
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: County in California, southern California. But and I said, it's
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: not really a sea, and you said it's an endless sea.
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: Then he said save it.
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: And said this is gold. I didn't say save it
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: like that.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: Well, no, I mean, I'm not gonna do my Josh impression.
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: You just did a really mean Josh impression.
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: Save it? No, no, no, I guess we need to
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: determine this. Why do they call it a sea?
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: I mean it's an inland sea. I don't know. I
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: just know that most people call it that. I failed
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: to go look up whether it is a sea or lake.
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: I mean, I don't think it has any outlet to
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: the ocean anymore.
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: Right, No, not anymore. We're going to talk about that.
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: Well, that makes it a lake, save it. I think
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: that's see, I nailed it. I think that's the difference
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: between a sea and a lake. I think a lake
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: has no outlet to the ocean and a sea does. Oh,
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: if I'm not mistaken, I might be wrong about that.
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: I didn't look it up.
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: But I think California has a lot of work to do.
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: They need to go rewrite all their pamphlets and update
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: their websites and all that stuff. It's now the Saltan Lake.
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: Well, now all their pamphlets just say don't even bother
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: coming here, right to the Sultan Sea. That is not
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: a California.
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: I love California exactly. And the reason that they would
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: have pamphlets that say don't come here is because the
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: Salt and Sea is a genuine an ecological disaster. Yeah,
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: human made it every step of the way. And it's
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: got a really interesting history too. It's just a good
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: all around topic if you ask me. Plus, it was
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: a Soso movie starring Val Kilmer back in the you know,
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: late nineties or early two thousands.
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: I think it was early two thousands. It was okay,
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: I saw it.
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: The extra supporting character was meth.
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it was very messy. Yeah, I've been here, by
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: the way, I was wondering that. Yeah. On on my
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: big out West trip many years ago after college, where
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: I spent several months driving around with my best friend Brett,
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: we went through the Salt and Sea and it wasn't
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: great back then. Imagine it's well, it sounds like it's
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: even worse now. But when did we talk about this before?
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: Was it desertification?
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: Oh? Maybe, because I know we've talked about that doesn't
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: ring a bell, but I mean so much.
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: So that I was convinced we did a whole upisode.
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: But it could have been one of our ill can
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: see videos that we used to do.
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: That's possible too, because I think I could see us
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: taking the angle that there were ghost towns there.
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: Oh, okay, you know ghost towns there are.
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: There's a lot of ghost towns there is. We'll see
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: the area was once quite developed, and for good reasons. Again,
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: as we'll see, people largely abandoned this area. But let's
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: talk about how the Salt and Sea even came to be,
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: because that is an interesting story in and of itself.
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it totally is. It's in the Salton Basin and
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: that's Sa L t O N by the way, right,
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: and that is a very large trough, just sort of
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: a natural geological trough that led into at one point
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: the Gulf of California. But it was there were other
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: seas before this sea or lakes, if you want to
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: go that route.
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah. From the oldest I saw is that we have
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: geological evidence of inland seas or lakes depending on your definition,
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: going back at least forty thousand years, and that it
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: was almost cyclical. There'd be a lake that was there
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: for a few hundred years and it would dry up
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: or flow out to the Gulf of California, and then
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: it would happen again a couple centuries later. And the
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: thing that made it happen was the Colorado River, which
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: flows to the east along the border of California, Nevada
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: and California and Arizona down into I guess the Gulf
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: of California, right.
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: Are you asking me?
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: I think so.
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: So.
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: That would make the Colorado River a sea, but it
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: flows into there and every once in a while there's
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: a lot of snow melt, there's a lot of rain,
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: and the Colorado River will flood its bank so much
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: that a bunch of it gets diverted into the Saltan basin,
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: forming one of the salt and seas.
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: Over time, Yeah, for a while, Like you said, you know,
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: it could be there for a while, and eventually it's
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: on the middle of the desert, so eventually it's going
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: to evaporate, right. But as the river flowed in there,
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: it carried a lot of silts with it, and eventually
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: that silt gummed up the outlet so it couldn't get anywhere,
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: So there was a natural dam that was formed. And
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: you know, it was, like you said, it was a
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: lake for a long time. Sometimes it was a saltwater lake.
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: Sometimes the heat would dry it out and evaporate it
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: and it would just become a dry bed once again.
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: And it was just kind of weird geological cyclelog I mean,
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: I'm sure this has happened elsewhere, but it seems particularly
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: noteworthy for this area.
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: It does. It seems kind of unique, you know, yeah,
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: I think so. There's also one of these lakes or seas.
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: You'll like this one because they call it a lake
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: Lake Kahuila, which formed about thirteen hundred years ago as
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: well as geologists can tell, and it stuck around for
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: hundreds of years, possibly up into the fifteen hundreds, and
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: at one point in the fifteen hundreds it flooded, so
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: it was already there, and it grew to about twenty
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: six times the size of the Sultan Sea. Oh wow,
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: which in and of itself that sounds pretty impressive. But
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: I came up with a few comparisons for some of
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: our listeners around the world. If I may sure, for
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: our Northern listeners, that is larger than the size of
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: Lake Erie.
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: For our Canadian listeners, it's four times larger than the
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: capital city of Ottawa. For European listeners, that's larger than Belgium.
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: In the UK, that's bigger than Wales. In Australia, that's
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: two times the greater Sydney metro area. And for our
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: friends in California, that's twenty six times the size of
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: the Sultan Sea.
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: Wow, you did your homework, I did. Is there a
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: program to use, like just like Josh converts dot com?
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: There there are?
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: I make like twelve dollars a month on webed that's great. No,
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: there's there's websites that says like they're called like the
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: size of or something like that. So usually it's type
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: it's been what's the size of ten thousand square miles?
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: Which is what that would be?
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: Is a landing page? Just a banana? Yeah, it starts
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: from there.
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Well where did that come from? Using a banana
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: for scale?
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: Do you know?
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: Oh?
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: I don't know. I never I mean, who starts any
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: of these things?
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: Okay, I didn't know if it was something that you
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: had kind of brought up or something. Because I know
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: this stuff. You should know. Army is crazy for that.
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: No, it's just an internet thing, you know. Okay, So
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: Ron's doing all of that stuff.
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: Get all Ron. He comes up with the best memes.
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: All right. So that was the cycle for thousands of years.
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: Depositing that silt. One of the byproducts of that is
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: it made that soil very rich and stuff could really
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: grow on it if it rained ever, which it doesn't.
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: So that was a problem, and irrigation's going to solve
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: that problem. So in the early nineteen hundreds, the Imperial
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: Canal was built to say, hey, let's divert some of
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: that Colorado River to so we can have drinking water,
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: and so we can irrigate this rich, rich soil that
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: lies beneath our feet. And they completed it, and you know,
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: it was pretty good, but that same silt is going
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: to keep clogging up even you know, kind of any
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: moving body of water, and that eventually happened to the canal,
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: like in a bad way, not too long after they opened.
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: It, No, just in a couple of years, and this
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: one clog was so bad that they were like, we're
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: not going to get rid of this anytime soon. So
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: they dug a bypass around it, you know, yeah, which
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: makes sense, it's smart, and they just expected it to
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: last like a couple of months until they cleaned that
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: silt deposit out and could go back to the original canal.
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: The problem was, because they thought it was going to
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: be temporary, they didn't install the proper headgates. Headgates control
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: the flow of water in a canal, so that means
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: that the water in that bypass was literally out of control.
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: Which was fine. They dug it well enough that under
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: normal circumstances, as the water was flowing normally, But the
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: year after they dug that bypass, it stayed around longer
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: than expected, and the year after there were some genuinely
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: abnormal circumstances that caused a huge problem for everybody.
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it rained a lot, a big rainy season and
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: then you know, snow melt and the rockies can always
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: be a problem if it was extra, and that year
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: it was extra. Coinciding with those rains, the Colorado River
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: swoll up again and it, you know, did what water does.
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: It goes down river in a pretty impactful way and
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: really overwhelmed that temporary channel that they were using to
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: divert around the cloud Canal. It carved it. It just
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: made it bigger and deeper, and eventually it started overflowing
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: into that salt and sink and just became one big
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: body of water.
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, So essentially Colorado River decided I'll go this way instead,
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: So it actually changed its course from the the way
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: that it had been going for millennia to this way
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: directly into the salt and sea, and it started flowing
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: so fast that ninety thousand cubic feet of water per
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: second was flowing into the salt and sea. Right That
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: is the size of an Olympic sized pool. That much
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: water flowing in every second.
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and for our friends in the north, that's an
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: Olympic size pool, right, and I'm not going to keep.
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: Going, Well, what about our friends who like McDonald's.
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: Oh, I mean, if you did a big mac conversion,
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: that's really going the extra mile.
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: It is exactly two million, two hundred and ninety five thousand,
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: nine hundred and eighteen big macs all flowing into the
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: salt and sea per second.
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: So delicious.
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: It does seem delicious, But imagine them all kind of
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: flowing at once and smacking into another probably get kind
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: of gross.
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, pretty gross. So, I mean that happened for a
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: couple of years, and they tried to redirect the river.
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: It was a pretty expensive proposition. It was a pretty
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: frantic thing. The US government got involved, the Southern Pacific
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: Railroad got involved. They fully sealed it in nineteen oh seven.
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: But that's like what three years later, and you know,
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: by that point it's too late. They're like, all, right, now,
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: we got a four hundred square mile inland sea or lake,
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: depending on who's podcasting many years from now, right.
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah. The way that they sealed it, the Union Pacific
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: Railroad because their lines were threatened. They're like, we better
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: do something because these government yokels have no idea what
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: to do, and so apparently it took two They built
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: a trestle across the river to install a dam made
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: of twenty fifty seven car loads of rock, two hundred
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: and twenty one car loads of gravel, and two hundred
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: and three carloads of clay, all dumped into one spot
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: to finally fill that breach. That's what it took. That's
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: how big of a breach it was?
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: How many big banks A lot?
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: I didn't do that one. Sorry, it's okayoud we take
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: a break now?
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: Or is that a should we? It seems like a
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: good time for a break.
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the Sultan Sea is now there, the breach has
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: been sealed, and people are saying, what the heck are
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: we gonna do with this?
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we're gonna water ski eventually. So we'll come back
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: and talk about that right after.
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: This learning stuff from Josh stuff you shoult No.
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: Lately I've been learning some stop about insomnia or aluminia.
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: How about the one on border like disorder?
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: That are your order?
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: That one before?
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: But it was so nice, honest, Why except everybody listen.
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: Up shot, stop stop.
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: Stop.
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: All right. So when we last left you, human experimentation
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: and sort of error and rain and snow melt caused
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: a four hundred square mile almost thirty five mile long
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: and fifteen mile wide, about thirty foot deep on average
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: lake to form in the middle of the California Desert
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: because it's where it was. Eventually, if humankind had not
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: intruded once again, it probably would have eventually just completely
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: evaporate like it had been doing for millennia. But like
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: we mentioned, that, soil is good stuff. So they started
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: to build, you know, farmland out there and irrigate that land.
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: And what do you do when you irrigate stuff, You
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: got to have runoff. And so they're running this irrigation
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: water off into the lake, which basically it's like, hey,
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: we're putting at least as much water as you're evaporating,
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: so you're not going anywhere.
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: No, Yeah, that's right. So it stabilized the lake in Deafen,
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: just the agricultural run off. One of the other things
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: that the other impacts that this had because they started
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: doing that in the twenties, is that agricultural runoff as
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: chalk full of salt, which I didn't realize, but this
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: irrigation produces a lot of salt, and that stuff was
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: flowing right into the Saltan and it turned it salty. Today,
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: I saw anywhere between one third or fifty percent more
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: salty than the Pacific Ocean. The salt and Sea has
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: become because of all that introduction. So it started freshwater,
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: and then because of agricultural runoff, it turned into a
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: salt water inland sea slash lake.
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: That's right. And because it's located along the Pacific Flyway,
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: which is a great migratory bird route, the birds are like, hey,
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: this is great. Now there's water here. The locals were like,
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: we should put some fish in here, so they stocked
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: it with tilapia, a lot of tilapia and sportfish for
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: sport fishing, and of course that the birds love that
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: even more. So, all of a sudden, by the nineteen thirties,
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: you have a sort of a brand new wildlife refuge forming,
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: such that the US Fish and Wildlife Service even created
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: the Saltan Sea Wildlife Refuge to protect all the stuff
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: that was there. Now.
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so when the Sultan Sea first formed, everybody's like,
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: this is actually kind of great. This is a mistake
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: that turned really wonderful for everybody. We turned river water
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: into lemonade. In other words, that's right. So there are
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: some other weird things that didn't make it, but that
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: were introduced flamingos, which I guess aren't that weird. But
• 15:36
  Speaker 2: a guy introduced sea lions too at one point, and
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: they were accused of stealing pigs in the area. But
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: the guy who introduced sea lions in flamingos, he had
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: a legendary restaurant out on an island in the middle
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: of the Salton Sea called Mullet Island, which is actually
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: just sitting atop a dormant volcano. It's very important to
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: remember this for later. It's a dormant but not extinct volcano.
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: It's just kind of sitting there, chilling, waiting to go up.
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: That's right. And you know, once you have flamingos, you're
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: going to have people because people want to go see
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: this flamingos. So by the nineteen fifties, developers had come
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: along and turned it into what they called the California
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: Riviera or the Saltan Riviera or Palm Springs by the Sea,
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: and it's exactly what you think. It's tiki bars, it's
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: restaurants had a very Palm springsy vibe, like you know,
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: Elvis performed there, Frank Sinatra performed there. They had you know,
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: I wasn't kidding about the water skiing. They people yachted,
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: people swam. It was just a big recreation area out
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: there in the middle of the desert in you know,
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: southern California. They were like, yeah, we'll take another one
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: of these. We got plenty of people around, right, and
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: Palm Springs gets a little crowded, So now we have
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: this beautiful Inland Sea Lake. Yeah.
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: People started building vacation homes there. There were very famous
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: speedboat races that were held there every year. At one
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: point point, some developers sunk two million dollars in nineteen
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: sixty money into building the North Shore Beach and Yacht Club,
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: which became basically the crown jewel of the Salton Sea area.
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: There were postcards that said greetings from the Salton Sea.
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: There was a Bombay Beach resident, Who's.
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: Going to get postcards?
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: They had postcards?
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: Swear they did. They sell shotglasses.
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: I yes, there was a Spencer's Gifts on the Sultan
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: Sea in the sixties. All right, you could also get
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: a Bitch and Grateful Dead poster and a LaToya Jackson
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: and Lingerie poster.
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: Right is Shenna Lambeau.
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: I know that's Garfield.
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: So there was this Bombay Beach resident, which is one
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: of the little party towns on the Saltan Sea, and
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: it's still there. There's something like three hundred and fifty
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: people that lived there. But he said, back in the
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: day it was like a spring Break party all the time.
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: The problem was the Salton Sea. As much fun as
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: people were having on it, it was this ticking environmental
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: time bomb just growing underneath their water skis essentially day
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: by day. And so finally in around the seventies it
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: became clear that the salt and seas glitz was starting
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: to weih off and there was rotten big max underneath.
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: Do you know I thought you were going to lead
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: it in with when you said the problem is I
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: thought you were going to say, is it spring break
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: is not meant to last forever?
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: Oh, that's a great one. Let's go back and edit
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: that in just a note. Okay, there'll be no context,
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: You'll just add it in and then we'll leave the
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: part where you suggested into I agree.
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: Uh yeah, so yeah, things will go downhill pretty quickly.
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: You know. I hope we've hammered home enough that this
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: thing just sort of appeared because of people, and it's
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: out in the middle of the desert and it's not
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: supposed it wasn't supposed to be there really, so obviously
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: it's not going to rain, so that's not going to
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: fill that thing back up. They had that agricultural runoff
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: for many years, but as we'll see, that would end
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: up being a big part of the problem. Yeahments would flood,
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: you know, because they were building, you know, lakeside properties
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: and stuff like that. So you know, whenever you try
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: to intrude I feel like and build a big natural
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: thing out where there probably wasn't supposed to be one.
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: I feel like, it usually goes south like this in
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: some way.
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it hubris. Yeah, So yeah, that runoff would sometimes
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: flood the lake. There'd be so much of it, and
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: those developments would flood. Like you were saying, the other
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: problem with the runoff is that it not just salt.
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: It brings lots of pesticides and fertilizers with it. And
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: remember that there was no outlet for this lake, which
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: made it a lake in the first place, so all
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: of this toxic water didn't have anywhere to go, right,
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: it just stayed in the lake. Yeah, And anytime you
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: have a lot of fertilizers introduced into a body of water,
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: especially a warm one, you get algae blooms. You also
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: get bacteria blooms. And when the algae decays, the microbes
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: that eat it also suck up a lot of the
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: oxygen in the water, and that kills off all the
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: stuff that needs that oxygen, So it creates dead zones.
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: And then even worse that bacteria that blooms, some kinds
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: of it actually produce toxins that can do things like
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: damage humans livers or their DNA or cause respiratory failure.
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: So all this stuff is starting to like happen in
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: the Sultan Sea starting in the seventies and eighties, and
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: it's it's just becoming clear that there's problems that are
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: starting to brew, like literally brewing within the salt and sea.
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's called utrification. And there are some pretty staggering
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: and very sad statistics that we're going to kind of
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: run through here as far as the die off, because
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: you know, the fish die off, and then eventually because
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: of the fish die off, the bird die off was
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: really massive. This one is fairly staggering. Just over a
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: five month period from December ninety one to April ninety two,
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: one hundred and fifty thousand little small waterbirds are called
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: what are those eared grebs?
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah?
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: Is that? What was that? How we're pronouncing that?
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: I was gonna say grevi's, but I think you nailed it.
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: I'm not really sure, but they're little small waterbirds. And
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: one hundred and fifty thousand them died over five months.
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: On the Saltan Sea. Another twenty thousand and ninety four
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: ten thousand white and brown pelicans died out in nineteen
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: ninety six, about ten thousand other fish eating birds. And
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: this is the really sad one. Even though it was
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: I say, only a thousand, that's a lot, but they
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: were endangered brown pelicans and apparently that was the largest
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: sort of single die off of an endangered species to
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: ever happen.
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, and all this is going down on the
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: Saltan Sea.
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: Or the Telapia. Man, how about that stat?
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the most eye popping stat that I've found is
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: that eight million, eight million tilapia died in one single
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: day in August of nineteen ninety nine.
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: How did they figure that, you know, I don't know.
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: They must have counted one in like a square foot
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: and then multiplied it by a big mash or something.
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, by this case fish tacos. Maybe that was probably insensitive.
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: What fish tacos?
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: Well, I mean this is good for I don't eat
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: telapia much, but it's pretty good for a fish taco.
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: Aren't they the rats of the sea?
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think so. I used to eat it more.
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: I'll eat tilapia. I'm not that fancy. Oh oh yeah, yeah,
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: I'll eat tilapia right in front of you.
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: Well, I'll be dining on my Chilean sea bass or
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: what was that something toothfish? Right?
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: Did I forgot Patagonia? That's the real name for sea bass,
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: that's right, suckers. So yes, again, I think it's worth
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: restating eight million tilapia died in a single day in
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: nineteen ninety nine. The previous record before that had been
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: set the summer prior, and that was five hundred thousand
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: that died on a single day. So clearly things are
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: getting worse by the year. At the Sultan's Sea by
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: the time the nineties roll around.
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and so I mean they were running incinerators around
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: the clock around town because you know, the smell of
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: fish carcass was everywhere, and you had all these very
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: sadly all these animal bodies all over the place. I
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: guess you could call them carcasses, but I'm gonna say bodies.
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: So there's another there's an explanation for this too, and
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: it's actually pretty simple. In addition to those the eutrophication
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: dead zones that are produced by those algae blooms, just
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: simple summertime heat and a really saline body of water
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: can kill fish on mass. And that's exactly what was
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: going on as the salt and sea warmed, as summer
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: started to kind of get going. And there's like one
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: hundred and five degree August temperatures hot water. Warm water
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: carry less oxygen than cooler water, and salt water carries
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: less oxygen than fresh water. So when you have warm,
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: briny water, fish can suffocate. And that's what was happening.
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: And so fish die offs are just an annual part
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: of life around the salt and sea.
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And I mean not only that, it's just losing
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: surface area. It's shrinking, so ten percent has been lost
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: in recent years. They're projecting forty percent by twenty thirty.
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: And when that's happening in a really salty area, and
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: all those pesticides and metals and everything that have been
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: you know, deposited over the years due to the agriculture
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: all around, it just makes it more concentrated, and it's just,
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: you know, it's a bad scene. It's getting just salty
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: air over the years, it's getting more you know, chalk
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: full of more densely packed pesticides and things. And they're
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: saying that the salinity is probably going to increase another
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: maybe three times in the next ten years, basically kind
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: of taking care of anything else that might still be
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: living there.
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: Right, And just from the fact that it's shrinking too.
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: I saw that there's houses that were built along the
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: shoreline back in the heyday that are now like a
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: football field away from the shoreline. Now, that's how much
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: it's shrunk, and they expect it's going to shrink another
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: forty percent by twenty thirty. So things are getting dire here, right,
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: And you can kind of imagine that as things started
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: to go downhill, tourism dropped off, and that happened exactly
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: as you'd think. That north Shore Beach and Yacht Club
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: that was the Crown Jewel it closed down in nineteen
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: eighty four because there was a flood from agricultural runoff.
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: And then I saw a really cool, eerie picture, Chuck.
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: There's a drive in movie theater again from back in
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: the day. It's in Bombay Beach and for some reason,
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: the cars are all parked like they're there to see
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: the movie, but they're all junked and abandoned, mostly missing wheels,
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: and they're just they just got put like that, and
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: it looks like everybody kind of left the Saltan Sea
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: mid movie. It's really cool to see. I would strongly
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: suggest looking up that picture. I don't remember where I
• 26:11
  Speaker 2: saw it.
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: Well, I'll do you even better. There's a video on YouTube,
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: because that's a very I mean, people aren't tourism wise,
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: they're not flocking there, but people like me and people
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: that are the same kind of people go to like
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: abandoned roller coaster parks, amusement parks. We'll still go to
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: the Sultan Sea to kind of check things out. And
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: one of these videos it's from the Gnarly Speed Shop,
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: and I think if you just look up abandoned cars
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: that drive in on YouTube Gnarly speed Shop, they do
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: a cool video sort of walk through of the drive
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: in and the surrounding area. There's this very like every
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: picture you see of this, there's a very kind of
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: striking old orange Maverick car sitting in the front of
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: frame because I guess it's kind of closest to the road,
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: and there was graffiti on it and I could never
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: tell what it said from the pictures, but on the
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: video I was able to pause it and it says
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: you infected me in a way I didn't know what
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: was possible, which is very creepy. I don't know if
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: that was like a message to a long lost love
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: or if it was, you know, relating to the Saltan
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: Sea and what happened there. But it's pretty cool video.
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: And there were boats in the parking lot too, so
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: I don't think like it just looks like everyone got
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: up in the middle of a movie. I think people
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: just like went and like park their cars in this
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: abandoned lot, is what happened?
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: Sure, sure, yeah, I know that they didn't do that.
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: It didn't happen that rapidly, but that's what it looks like.
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: I think it's so cool.
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: You know, think you thought I didn't think you thought that.
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: So I remembered where I saw it, Chuck. I saw
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: it on a slide show on all that's interesting. Great, Okay,
• 27:46
  Speaker 2: So do you want to take a second break and
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: come back and talk about how it has gotten even
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: worse than what we've said so far?
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, let's do it.
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: Okay, stuff you shout.
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: Lately, I've been learning some stop about in Saunia or Aluminia.
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: How about the one on border like sorder that or
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: yacht border? Heard that one before, but it was so nice, Arnes,
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: Why except nobody listen up? Stop stop stop?
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: Okay, Chuck. So the Sultan Sea has really gone downhill,
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: there's no denying it. People have decamped from there, not
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: just vacationers, but people who lived there too, just moved
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: away because it's gotten so gross. We didn't mention it.
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: But one of the things that happened, I think I
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: don't remember what year it was, there was a sulfur
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: dioxide cloud that wafted basically all across southern California all
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: the way to Los Angeles and it stunk like rotten eggs,
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: and they traced it back to the Saltan Sea. It
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: was all of the decomposition of all the muck, all
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: the dead fish, all the everything. It was so bad
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: that you could smell it all over southern California. So
• 29:19
  Speaker 2: this is the state of the Salton seasons. People are like,
• 29:22
  Speaker 2: we need to do something about this. And for years
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: and years, starting in the early late nineties early two thousands,
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: the idea was, let's just restore it to its former glory.
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: And that idea became a non starter essentially for the
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: next couple decades because it's just a bad idea. You
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: can't do it now, it's too late. But it took
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: a while for the California government to figure that out.
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah there, we'll talk about a bunch of the stops
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: and starts over the years. In two thousand and three,
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: the water Districts of Southern California signed off That was
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: this deal that they had been negotiating for years called
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: the Quantification Settlement Agreement of QSA, And basically what they
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: were trying to get done was say, hey, let's once
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: again take some of that Colorado River water and the
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: stuff that they had been using for irrigation is now
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: being redirected to like, you know, a lot of the
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: area was then built up into more urban areas in
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: the Coachella Valley and like San Diego, and they're like, well,
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: we want that water now, and in exchange, those areas
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: would say, all right, now, what we're gonna do is
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: pay the farmers there a lot of money to upgrade
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: their old equipment. It was really inefficient irrigation equipment. The
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: newer versions won't have nearly as much waste water, and
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: so they're like, let's do a trade off here. We'll
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: pay you to upgrade your stuff and in return, you
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: give us a lot of the water that we need.
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: Right. So, the problem as far as the Salton Sea
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: is concerned that agricultural runoff, remember was keeping it going. Yeah,
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: So since there's less irrigation runoff, because these irrigation techniques
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: have been vastly updated, there's no not really any agricultural
• 31:10
  Speaker 2: runoff coming and feeding the salt and sea any longer.
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: And part of that quantification settlement agreement was we need
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: to take some of this water that the Imperial Valley
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: farmers used to use and feed it into the salt
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: and sea for fifteen years.
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: They even paid the farmers to leave some of their
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: land fallow so they could direct that water to the
• 31:32
  Speaker 2: Sultan Sea. In retrospect, that seems like total madness. They
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: were essentially wasting all of that water, but it actually
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: turned out to be pressy, and even though they didn't
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: quite realize that it was a good thing for there
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: to be water there until we figure out what to do.
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: It's sort of like leaving the water on in your
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: tub with the drain slightly open, yeah, and just being like,
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: we're just going to leave the tub water on for
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: fifteen years so we can keep this body of water.
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: Yes, but your tub you got from an abandoned house, right,
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: and it had it has bath water that's one hundred
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: years old and full of pollutants and algae, and you're
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: just running your water into it.
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, So it's a horror movie tub.
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: It's a yes, exactly, that's exactly what it is.
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So you might be asking, like, hey, if this
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: thing wasn't supposed to be there to begin with, if
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: the whole idea of a body of water out in
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: the middle of the desert like that is just going
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: to dry up naturally, Like, just let it dry up naturally,
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: and like, what's the big deal. One of the big
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: deals is is that there's still a lot of biodiversity there.
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: It's not like it killed everything. It seems like that
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: eventually might happen, But it's still a habitat. It's still
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: a migratory stop for birds on that fly route, right,
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: And it's because you know, southern California has been developed
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: so much, a lot of the other natural habitats for
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: them have gone away. So the Salt and Sea was
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: as sad as it was was like an oasis for
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: them on right.
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that is sad because if the salt and Sea
• 33:04
  Speaker 2: is the more attractive option, because that's all that's left,
• 33:07
  Speaker 2: those poor birds are in trouble. It's not just the
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: birds that are in trouble. There are people that still
• 33:12
  Speaker 2: live around there. In fact, I was really surprised to
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: find the Salt and City, which I believe is the
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: biggest town along the Salt and Sea. It's on the
• 33:21
  Speaker 2: northwest shore. Their population actually increased since the twenty twenty
• 33:25
  Speaker 2: census by almost one thousand people, which are like wow,
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: a thousand people who cares well, They were less than
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: six thousand in population at the time of the twenty
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: twenty census, So people are moving there because the housing
• 33:37
  Speaker 2: is so affordable it's insane. So there's people. There's in
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: the whole region, there's something like six hundred and fifty
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: thousand people, and all of those people are at tremendous
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: risk right now of a cornucopia of health hazards that
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: are starting to develop because of the salt and sea
• 33:57
  Speaker 2: evaporates more and more and more because off isn't sustaining
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: it anymore, and it's so hot that exposed sea bed
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: or lake bed that's so chock full of toxins that
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: you can barely look at it is turning to dust
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: that's getting blown off into the surrounding areas and causing
• 34:17
  Speaker 2: all sorts of problems.
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, asthma. They've already found an uptick in asthma. There's
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: a doctor named Jill Johnson, a PhD who's an assistant
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: professor of preventative medicine at Southern cal and she's working
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: on a research project called the Saltan Sea in Children's
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: Health colon assessing Imperial Valley respiratory health and environment. In
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: the environment along with partner show Rey Farzan and other PhD.
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: And they're basically following elementary school children in that area
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: and are seeing how their health is advancing and right
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: now pretty bad asthma rates and haven't proved causation yet,
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: but it seems like it's probably.
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, apparently. They just like this month, published an article
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: on their findings from this in the American Journal of
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine. You know that rag. Yeah,
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: And it basically is like this is, yes, this is
• 35:14
  Speaker 2: causing asthma at the very least in little kids. There's
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: all sorts of other stuff to worry about too, because
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: there's metals, pesticides, DDT has been found in there. There's
• 35:26
  Speaker 2: just so much crud in there that now that it's
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: drying up, is turning into dust and getting carried as
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: particulate matter that you don't you don't want to breathe
• 35:34
  Speaker 2: that stuff in, and yet it's just blowing around because
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: again now that's turned into desert, but it's toxic desert.
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And that's that's just like health issues. There's also
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: like a financial impact. There was a study about eleven
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: years ago or so from the Pacific Institute. They're a
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: think tank in Oakland that deals with water policy, and
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: and they said the financial toll could be as much
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: as seventy billion dollars over the next thirty years, right,
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: like property values, like you said, going south, public health,
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: which we've mentioned, the continued loss of recreational revenue and
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: natural habitat. So you know, there's a big financial burden.
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: So you know, obviously because of that, California over the past,
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: like you know, twenty five years, has had various stops
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: and starts with funding for different projects that will get
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: approved and then the money just gets diverted or never
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: shows up.
• 36:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and especially before that twenty fourteen study from the
• 36:33
  Speaker 2: Pacific Institute, people are like this, eight billion dollars seems
• 36:38
  Speaker 2: like a little much to restore the salt and Sea.
• 36:42
  Speaker 2: One of the reasons why is because the area that
• 36:46
  Speaker 2: the Salton Sea is in, the people who live around
• 36:48
  Speaker 2: it are fairly low income. It's a very rural area
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: and a lot of the people who are affected live
• 36:55
  Speaker 2: in Mexico, so back in Sacramento, the capital of California,
• 36:59
  Speaker 2: which is pretty far away from the Sultan Sea. Yeah,
• 37:03
  Speaker 2: the political will just hasn't been there. And one of
• 37:06
  Speaker 2: the things you could do if you were a senator,
• 37:08
  Speaker 2: a congress person, a governor, you could fully go after
• 37:12
  Speaker 2: a bunch of funds to save the Sultan Sea and
• 37:15
  Speaker 2: remediate the area and get it back to its former glory.
• 37:19
  Speaker 2: And then your legislature would say, no, we're not funding that.
• 37:23
  Speaker 2: You'd be like, oh, man, I tried. And that seems
• 37:25
  Speaker 2: like what the pattern was for the first like about
• 37:29
  Speaker 2: twenty ish years, maybe a little more than that that
• 37:31
  Speaker 2: people started coming up with ideas to do something about this.
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Gray Davis, when he was governor in two thousand
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: and three assigned the Saltan Sea Record I'm sorry, Restoration
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: Act and the Saltan Sea Restoration Fund, but that didn't
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: receive funding. So a fund without funding is not a fund. No,
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: just like a sea without an outlet as a lake. Right, yes, absolutely,
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: all right. In two thousand and seven, the Corp of Engineers,
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: the Army Corps Engineers, got authorization to spend up to
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: thirty million on projects. The money was finally appropriated in
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: twenty fifteen, and the Obama administration spent a couple of
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: hundred grand is all on a study, another study.
• 38:14
  Speaker 2: Even that was the thirty million, that's what it turned
• 38:17
  Speaker 2: out to be from what I can tell, it went
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: from thirty million dollars to two hundred thousand dollars and
• 38:21
  Speaker 2: it was for another study. Isn't that crazy?
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah? I mean none of this, though, is going to
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: make any difference. I mean even a thirty million dollar thing,
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: or I think there was one plan. Yeah, a ten
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: year Saltan sea plan to cost three hundred and eighty
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: three million. But that's not even for restoration, because, like
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: you said, that ship is sailed. It is a multi
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: multi billion dollar thing if they want to get this
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: thing back to the California riviera. So right, it doesn't
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: seem like that's just ever going to happen. It's not empossible.
• 38:52
  Speaker 2: No, So now they're looking at restoring parts of it
• 38:54
  Speaker 2: to turn it back into wetlands for birds. Right, And
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: that ten year plan is estimated to cost three hundred
• 39:02
  Speaker 2: and eighty three million dollars.
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: Just to do that.
• 39:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And it looked like it was just going to
• 39:07
  Speaker 2: be another pie in the sky, a proposal that would
• 39:11
  Speaker 2: never get funding. But California came up with something like
• 39:15
  Speaker 2: two hundred million dollars of that. They're under Devin Newsom.
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: In the last couple of years. It has been huge,
• 39:21
  Speaker 2: crazy movements compared to what had been done in the
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: last couple of decades, and California came up with two
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: hundred million dollars out of nowhere. Mind bogglingly, the federal
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: government chipped in another two hundred and forty million dollars
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: two hundred and forty five So now this project that
• 39:38
  Speaker 2: needed three hundred and eighty three million has almost half
• 39:41
  Speaker 2: a billion. So not only are they now on the
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: salt and sea saying like, you know, when are we
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: ever going to be able to do anything about this too,
• 39:50
  Speaker 2: we can actually do more than we wanted to do
• 39:52
  Speaker 2: in our ten year plan. The things are starting to
• 39:55
  Speaker 2: pick up, and they're starting to restore wetlands, and it
• 39:59
  Speaker 2: actually looks like it's going to not be quite the
• 40:03
  Speaker 2: ecological disaster that it would have been California just sat
• 40:06
  Speaker 2: on its hands.
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I think between twenty and three and twenty sixteen,
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: just a few dozen acres of the wetland were restored.
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: Since then about two thousand more, and the Species Conservation
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: Habitat Project has a plan over the next decade to
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: restore another nine thousand acres, so that'd be like roughly
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: twelve thousand acres of restoration, which is pretty good. They
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: also think that, you know, it's southern California, so it's
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: a moneyed area in general, not that exact area, but
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: they're saying like, hey, we can like we've got this
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: great land there that we can make money off. Still,
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: remember that Mullet Island that's on the dormant volcano. That
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: means there's some hotspots there, and so some people are saying, hey,
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: let's put a few billion dollars toward a geothermal electricity plant. Yeah,
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: mine some lithium.
• 41:02
  Speaker 2: Yes, I believe they're already building the plants there. And
• 41:05
  Speaker 2: then the lithium. I don't know if they've actually started that,
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: but there's a lot of lithium there, and that is
• 41:10
  Speaker 2: like twenty first century gold because you use that in
• 41:13
  Speaker 2: batteries for electric vehicles, for giant batteries to back up
• 41:17
  Speaker 2: your power grid. And there's a push and pull over
• 41:22
  Speaker 2: whether it's a lithium mine there, And of course they're
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: going to end up lithium mining there because it's just
• 41:26
  Speaker 2: so valuable. But some people are like, it's already an
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: environmental catastrophe. Who cares if lithium mining makes it a
• 41:34
  Speaker 2: little bit worse. It's better than mining in a more
• 41:36
  Speaker 2: pristine area and really screwing that up. Other people are like, no,
• 41:40
  Speaker 2: we're trying to restore it. So lithium mining is gonna
• 41:43
  Speaker 2: not only undo that stuff, it's gonna make it even
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: worse than it was. But my money is definitely on
• 41:49
  Speaker 2: them lithium mining.
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, agreed.
• 41:52
  Speaker 2: There's a couple other things that are noteworthy about the Sultancy.
• 41:55
  Speaker 2: I guess we can leave that part that there's actually
• 41:58
  Speaker 2: hope for it right now. But along the way, like
• 42:02
  Speaker 2: you can imagine, such a bizarre place generated some really
• 42:05
  Speaker 2: interesting urban legends over the years, right, Oh yeah, some
• 42:10
  Speaker 2: of them are actually true. The Navy used to use
• 42:13
  Speaker 2: the salt and sea to drop test bombs or dummy bombs,
• 42:17
  Speaker 2: to basically train their bomber pilots how to drop bombs,
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: and they actually supposedly practiced for the atomic bomb drops
• 42:24
  Speaker 2: and they are so there's dummy bombs under the salt
• 42:28
  Speaker 2: and sea still, and of course locals are like, that's
• 42:30
  Speaker 2: just a cover story. They actually lost an atomic bomb
• 42:33
  Speaker 2: and that's what's hiding there. There's an undetonated atomic bomb
• 42:37
  Speaker 2: under there. Now, there are a bunch of Navy planes
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: that dig crash. I think eighteen flyers died over the years,
• 42:44
  Speaker 2: but there's twenty four planes sunken in the Salt and
• 42:47
  Speaker 2: Sea right now. And then there's this one really weird
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: legend that predates the Salt and Sea. It's the Lost
• 42:55
  Speaker 2: Ship of the Desert. Have you ever heard of that?
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: Never heard of it?
• 42:59
  Speaker 2: Well, it's a apparently this legendary lower that there was
• 43:03
  Speaker 2: anything from a Spanish galleon to a Viking ship that
• 43:08
  Speaker 2: sailed up the Gulf of California and eventually got stuck
• 43:13
  Speaker 2: and that turned into desert and the ship was swallowed up.
• 43:16
  Speaker 2: And some people are saying it was actually in the
• 43:19
  Speaker 2: Salt and Basin, which is now underneath the Salt and Sea.
• 43:23
  Speaker 2: So there's this whole idea that there's a Viking ship
• 43:26
  Speaker 2: potentially under there too.
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: Wow. Yeah, there's a great dive bar the ski In right, Yeah,
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: it's in that video they go to ski In and
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: play creepy old piano and have some beer. Yeah.
• 43:38
  Speaker 2: They call it the lowest dive bar in the Western
• 43:41
  Speaker 2: Hemisphere because it is two hundred and thirty seven feet
• 43:44
  Speaker 2: below sea level.
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: I think, yeah, right there at the I don't know
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: if they still call it Bombay Beach or if they
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: took that name away. But Bombay non beach because of
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: beach without water is not a beach, right.
• 43:56
  Speaker 2: There's also it's attracted a lot of artists too, like
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: a slab city is essentially a taken over military installation.
• 44:04
  Speaker 2: There's a folk art installation called Salvation Mountain. There's another
• 44:09
  Speaker 2: whole like outdoor gallery called East Jesus, I believe is
• 44:13
  Speaker 2: what it's called. So there's a lot of art that's
• 44:16
  Speaker 2: being made there that's kind of turning it into a
• 44:20
  Speaker 2: really neat, weird, decrepit art place.
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: Cool.
• 44:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you got anything else?
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: I got nothing else?
• 44:30
  Speaker 2: Okay, Well, let's it for the sull and see everybody
• 44:32
  Speaker 2: will have to keep an eye on it and see
• 44:33
  Speaker 2: what happens. And in the meantime, I think it's time
• 44:36
  Speaker 2: for listener mail.
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: Well, speaking of art, before I read listener mail, I
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: want to give a plug to dear old Ben, our
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: comrade here at stuff. You should know our colleague. He
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: is a producer along with Jerry, and Ben is a musician,
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: Ben Hackett, and he put out a great piece of art.
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: He put out a record called Songs for Sleeping Dogs,
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: not too long ago. And Ben's awesome songs for Sleeping
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: Dogs is great. It's this very vibey instrumental. I think
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: you dig it actually, and so yeah, go check it out,
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: yeah wherever you get music.
• 45:16
  Speaker 2: Basically, yes, Ben is probably our most beloved stuff you
• 45:20
  Speaker 2: should remember because he's just so cool and chill and nice.
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: Whoa yeah you say that in front of Jerry. Okay,
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: all right, listener to mail time. We got a couple
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: of in the next couple of episodes on MTV VH
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: one because we got great response. And it was also
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: another one of those weird things where we did an
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: episode and then something in real life happened, and we
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: had no idea that when we did our MTV episode
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: that like the next week MTV would fold. Basically, yeah,
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: it's music channels. It was just one of those strange
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: stuff you should know, things that happened sometimes I.
• 45:54
  Speaker 2: Didn't quite understand, so like it was just its music channels.
• 45:58
  Speaker 2: I didn't know that it had any music channels left.
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think we talked about that, that there was
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: still some music happening. Well, Jerry just buzzed in and said,
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: it's just in Europe, So I don't know what to believe.
• 46:09
  Speaker 2: Now, Well, they definitely did something and it was right
• 46:12
  Speaker 2: after our episode for sure.
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, so this is about MTV. Hey, guys,
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: hoping that you would touch on this, especially toward the
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: end when Josh is talking about the social impacts of MTB.
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: But I'm talking about the MTV cut. Before MTV, the
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: average shot in a film or television show lasted an
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: average of eight seconds, and the MTV cut whittled that
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: down to two seconds. In College Circle two thousand, it
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: was called the MTB cut. Now the MTV cut is
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: the norm. You'd be hard pressed to find a show
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: that stays on one shot for eight seconds consistently anymore.
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: I wonder if people changed, or if the MTV cut
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: changed people and the way we watch.
• 46:52
  Speaker 2: I believe I'll bet that's one of those things where
• 46:54
  Speaker 2: if you saw it now, you'd be like, wow, this
• 46:56
  Speaker 2: is really weird and not quite put your finger on why.
• 47:00
  Speaker 2: But it'd just be almost unsettling to see a eight
• 47:03
  Speaker 2: second cut.
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: Maybe. I mean, I remember people talking about like quickcut
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: because of music videos, like it was a thing. That
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: is from Chris Singleton, who is an ops manager for
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: Independence Rock Media.
• 47:16
  Speaker 2: Very nice, So Chris knows what they're talking about.
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: I think so well.
• 47:20
  Speaker 2: Thanks a lot, Chris. That was very interesting and we
• 47:22
  Speaker 2: want to hear from you too. If you've got anything
• 47:24
  Speaker 2: interesting to say, you can eat you toob Yeah you can. Yes,
• 47:28
  Speaker 2: we want to hear from Bono and the Edge and
• 47:31
  Speaker 2: the other guys.
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: No, boy, what Madam and Larry come on, there you go.
• 47:37
  Speaker 2: Thank you. I could have come up with those given
• 47:39
  Speaker 2: a couple of months, for sure.
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: Sure.
• 47:42
  Speaker 2: So yeah, if you want to be like the band,
• 47:44
  Speaker 2: you two, you can email us at stuff Podcasts at
• 47:48
  Speaker 2: iHeartRadio dot com.
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.