Salton shell game

07:46 AM PST on Tuesday, March 16, 2004

The Press-Enterprise
The state, having taken over restoration plans for the Salton Sea, is holding its first public hearing in Riverside County today on the new process. Its only public hearing in Riverside County. Who needs us, right? We just live here. We'll just drop off our comments and let it go.

This is like being invited to guess which walnut shell the pea is hiding under. The sucker isn't supposed to get it right. He's supposed to feel like he got a fair chance, and to slink away.

What's going on here?

Riverside County spent a decade struggling, as a partner in the Salton Sea Authority, to find ways to restore the state's largest Inland body of water. Then the state cut a deal to send Imperial Valley farm water to the sprawling coastal suburbs, and there was the sea, entirely dependent on farm runoff, right in the way. So the state took over the restoration planning.

This left the Salton Sea Authority in the lurch. The authority is a partnership of people with a vested interest in seeing the Salton Sea's withering evaporation problems solved - solved for the wildlife that depend on this resource, and solved for the people of the Coachella Valley, who really don't want to see sandstorms blowing up off that exposed dry lakebed. With the help of Rep. Mary Bono, R-Palm Springs, the group was working up comprehensive plans for the sea.

But suddenly, the state seems to be talking about something a lot less ambitious - and it's not going to spend much time talking about it around here.

It's hard to have faith in a process like this. The people who will have to live with the solution - whatever that turns out to be - should have far more input in the planning.