Press Release
May 23, 2000
LA QUINTA--The Salton Sea Authority
will begin a series of pilot projects in the coming months to closely
evaluate two different desalinization concepts for the Salton Sea.
The Authority Board is taking the
action in the wake of an independent engineering report recommending it
examine the potential of reducing the salinity in the Salton Sea through
a series of shallow solar evaporation ponds similar to those used by
salt manufacturers.
That is one of the recommendations made
by Parsons Engineering, which also totally discounted the feasibility of
a pipeline to the ocean or gulf as a means to solve the Salton Sea’s
salinity problems.
The Authority’s board agreed last
week to initiate a number of Parsons recommendations including:
- Development and evaluation of a
series of solar evaporation ponds as a potential restoration
project;
- Implementation of the enhanced
evaporation system pilot project;
- Implementation of a solar pond pilot
project;
- Analyze commercial uses of
restoration byproducts such as brine shrimp from the solar ponds for
fish food;
- Analyze and re-evaluate the sea’s
elevation and salinity goals.
The Authority
will be soliciting contractors these pilot projects.
“These are major steps for the Salton
Sea,” said board president Tom Veysey. “We will shortly be moving
from studies and just simple tests to actually removing salt,” he
said.
The actions were taken just as the
Authority and the Bureau of Reclamation began evaluating hundreds of
comments that were received on the draft Environmental Impact Report and
Impact Statement on the alternatives for restoration of the Salton Sea.
Parsons proposed the onshore or in-sea
solar ponds as a modification of the in- sea evaporation pond
alternatives presented in the original EIR/EIS.
The engineering company was retained by
the Authority in March to conduct an independent fatal flaw analysis of
the restoration alternatives contained in the draft.
“There were no fatal flaws in the
alternatives,” said Chuck Thomas, Parsons project director who praised
the work by the Authority and Bureau “as a great effort to get to this
point.”
But while there were no fatal flaws, he
pointed out the Parsons team did not find any “silver bullets”
either.
“It would have been nice to find a
complete solution,” he said, but that did not happen.
The report, however, completely rules
out one solution that has been suggested by some local residents—a
pipeline to the Gulf or Pacific Ocean.
“Exporting water to the ocean from
the sea and importing water from the ocean is not an effective way to
reduce or control the Sea’s salinity,” the report states.
By importing salty ocean water, such
dual pipelines are extremely expensive (more than $1 billion) and there
are also major environmental and political hurdles. The Parsons report
states that they make no sense from an engineering perspective.
“Importing water from the ocean or
the Gulf is ineffective and should not be considered,” Thomas said.
The ocean water is “just too salty” to help reduce the Salton
Sea’s salinity.
And while exporting water is “an
effective salinity control measure, it is very expensive and there are
significant political challenges,” Thomas said.
The
pilot projects using the enhanced evaporation system will allow the
Authority to gather scientific data on whether such a system is both
economically and environmentally feasible. The 6-month project will take
place at the former U.S. Navy Salton Sea Test Base.
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