[narrator]

Oddly, California officials are trying to decide right now whether to save Lake Mead or the Salton Sea. One is a stinky polluted accidental lake and the other is the primary water source for Las Vegas. What the heck?

"He said the district will again seek binding guarantees from the federal and state government to help with the fast-drying Salton Sea before agreeing to reductions to preserve Lake Mead." https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/sophies-choice-water-off...

[danans]

> Oddly, California officials are trying to decide right now whether to save Lake Mead or the Salton Sea.

Not California officials.

It's the Imperial Irrigation District, which is the water utility for largely agricultural Imperial County, which is inland from San Diego. They grow a huge amount of produce there, so the water rights are primarily for farming, not for restoring the lake, which is fed by farming runoff.

So a better comparison is farming in the Imperial Valley vs Las Vegas.

[vwoolf]

Also California: "No" to desalination plants: https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/12/us/california-water-desaliniz...

[zik]

Well that just seems crazy if your state's turning into a desert. What are the arguments against it?

[carlivar]

Well it's in the article:

incredible energy consumption, its impacts on marine life, projected sea-level rise and the cost of the resulting water itself -- with that cost being passed on to customers.

[csdreamer7]

I read another article that phased the commission's argument that water recycling would be cheaper to rate payers and less environmentally destructive.

[lovich]

I think the government views the stinky polluted lake as more of a shield over the pollution that is keeping it from being flung everywhere in the next dust bowl.

We learned as a result of the dust bowl that many aspects of the environment that we thought were useless were actually providing a stabilizing affect on the local environment. This is how we got infrastructure projects like the great shelterbelt[1].

Given this historical context the situation looks like the inverse to me. Like how the hell can the government prioritize keeping an artificial oasis supplied with enough water for a city in the middle of the desert vs prioritizing keeping a man made disaster caused by our ancestors from affecting large swathes of the country?

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Plains_Shelterbelt

[tru3_power]

Isn’t the concern that if the salton sea dries up all the toxic waste will start blowing around everywhere?

[selimthegrim]

I don’t think anyone wants Biblical dust storms.