From a distance, the Salton Sea is an astonishing sight, a shimmering sky-blue expanse set against the barren Chocolate Mountains.
Up close, though, the scene changes like a mirage in the desert sun: It is a smelly, brownish-green biological stew 30 percent saltier than the ocean itself, strewn with dead fish and birds and surrounded by abandoned resorts and submerged beaches and boat ramps.The problem is that the Salton Sea, California's biggest lake, has no natural outlet. Water enters as runoff and leaves only through evaporation.
The runoff contains farm nutrients, pesticides, salt and selenium - a toxic chemical that is naturally present in the area - and as the water evaporates, the chemicals are left behind, climbing in concentration.
In recent years, the water has become too toxic for some fish, and they succumb to disease.
Nutrients from the farmland set off another chain reaction: Algae grows rampant, causing fish to suffocate. Then birds feed on the dead and diseased fish and die, too.
This summer, in fact, at least 13,000 migratory birds that stopped at the lake, an important stop along the Pacific Flyway, are believed to have died that way.
"One day, these birds will fly in and die here with no place to go," said Norm Niver, a 66-year-old musician who has lived on the lake since 1978. "And this will have consequences on the Western Hemisphere, if not the whole world."
After years of debate on how to save it, officials have tentatively decided to sacrifice part of the 380-square-mile lake to prevent all of it from turning into a giant, rancid salt flat.
The Salton Sea Authority wants to build a $200 million dike that would turn one side of the lake into an evaporation pond and allow the other side to receive fresh water. Salts and other contaminants would concentrate for as long as a century in the pond, which might have to be declared off-limits to the public.