Also at Headquarters is the Hook-up section. These hook-ups are close to the recreation area's headquarters office and have nearby restrooms and showers. They are located in front of the park's largest beach where many activities take place. Non-hookup group camping for hundreds of RVs is available at this location. There is also a sheltered meeting area for groups. Bombay Beach is located at the extreme southern end of the recreation area, next to the small town of Bombay Beach.
It's now closed. It had offered beach camping with chemical toilets and water and used to be a popular campground for fishermen. Some services are available in the adjacent town.
Bombay Beach, CA is a point of interest for photographers and visitors who want to view and shoot the ruins of part of town that once was.
These park areas are subject to summertime off-season closures from July 15 -Sep 30 :. Salt Creek Beach, another primitive campground, has on the beach camping, and chemical toilets. It is popular with fishermen and bird watchers. Salt Creek runs through the campground and is host to many species of birds, including some considered very rare.
The endangered pupfish also live in Salt Creek. Corvina Beach is also primitive, with water and chemical toilets, and is popular with groups. While this campground is on the shores of the Sea, it has a drop off to the beach and access can be difficult.
However, many winter fishermen spend the weekends at Corvina Beach. Mecca Beach Campground is a large developed campground with good beach access.
Mecca Beach has flush toilets and showers and a limited number of partial hook-up sites. Good fishing is found off of Mecca Beach and many swimmers and boaters enjoy the easy access to the water. Mecca Beach Campground is one of the more active areas in the recreation area. Visitor Center PDF on Area. Off Season Jun.
How to Keep Ice Cold in the Desert. Desert Survival Skills. In this area, salinity is usually associated with the Salton Sea. So what is salinity? The word salinity refers to the presence of salts in waters and soils. It refers to more than just sodium or chloride, the two elements of table salt. Magnesium, calcium, carbonate, bicarbonate, nitrate, and sulfate can all contribute to salinity.
The suitability of water for drinking, irrigation, or wildlife depends on the type and concentration of dissolved salts in water. The salinity of water is usually expressed in term of a measured parameter that is affected by all the dissolved salts in water. This is due both to the potential for significant negative impacts to public health and the environment, as well as to the fiscal and programmatic commitments the state has made to try to prevent such impacts.
Effectively responding to conditions at the Salton Sea represents a considerable and costly challenge for the state in the coming years. This report provides a status update on conditions and activities at the Salton Sea. We conclude by highlighting some key issues for the Legislature to monitor in the coming years to ensure the state is effectively meeting its goals for the Salton Sea. History of the Salton Sea. The Sea is a terminal lake, which means that it has no outlet to the ocean.
Over the past several thousand years, the Sea has intermittently both filled and dried up in this location. This happened when, through natural processes that occurred over time, the Colorado River changed course and spilled water into the lake bed, followed by the water eventually evaporating away when the river shifted course again.
The modern Sea was created in when a nearby irrigation canal carrying Colorado River water breached and water overflowed into the lake bed for nearly two years.
In the subsequent years, agricultural runoff from farms in the Imperial Valley fed the Sea, preventing it from fully drying up as had occurred in the past. However, over the past several decades, changes in agricultural water use practices by nearby farmers—including increased efficiencies such as replacing sprinklers with drip irrigation—have gradually diminished inflow into the Sea.
As such, the Sea has slowly been shrinking. Sea Was Once a Recreational Destination. In earlier decades—particularly between the s and s—the Sea was a popular recreational area. Because of the warm winter climate, proximity to Southern California cities, large size, and active fishery, the Sea became a popular destination for tourism, fishing, and water sports.
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife CDFW stocked the Sea with a variety of sport fish, and a number of communities were established around the shores of the Sea for both permanent residents and tourists. Some sources cite that at its recreational peak, the Salton Sea was drawing 1.
Sea Is Extremely Saline. While the modern Sea started off as a relatively fresh water body in , it is now more than 50 p ercent saltier than the Pacific Ocean.
Additionally, because the Sea has no outlet to the ocean, water that enters the Sea can only depart through evaporation, leaving salts behind. The Sea therefore has and will continue to become increasingly saline over time. Sea Provides Important Bird Habitat. Despite being a relatively new water body in geologic terms, the Sea has become an important habitat area for a large number of birds. Hundreds of thousands of birds use the Sea as a stopover point on their migrations each year.
In , the state, the federal government, Indian tribes, and a number of water districts in the region entered into a series of agreements to address longstanding issues regarding usage of Colorado River water. The Legislature also enacted a package of legislation to help implement the QSA.
An acre foot is the amount of water that would cover an acre of land at a depth of one foot. By reducing the amount of water available for agricultural uses in the Imperial Valley, these transfers have the effect of decreasing the amount of water that runs off fields into the Sea.
Therefore, while the Sea has been both shrinking in size and increasing in salinity for many decades, the decrease in inflow resulting from the QSA water transfers will expedite these trends. As we discuss later, state regulatory agencies also imposed a number of requirements to mitigate the potential effects of the QSA.
Specifically, the board issued a water rights order in r equiring that for 15 years, IID had to continue to provide inflow water to the Sea at levels sufficient to maintain the salinity levels that would have existed absent the transfer. The requirement to provide mitigation flows expired at the end of In many areas, this playa is covered with fine sediments that have been deposited at the bottom of the Sea.
Over time, particulate matter can become trapped in the lungs—causing asthma attacks, bronchitis, and lung diseases. Particulate matter is particularly dangerous to children and the elderly. The air quality around the Sea is already poor, due to existing airborne particulate matter from the surrounding desert, agricultural activities, and the nearby city of Mexicali, Mexico. The region consistently fails to meet federal air quality standards designed to protect public health.
Unless action is taken to suppress the potential additional emissions of fine dust from newly exposed playa, the regional air quality and public health risks are likely to significantly worsen as the Sea shrinks.
And on Wildlife. The shrinking Sea will also impair wildlife habitats. Specifically, as the Sea evaporates and thereby becomes more saline, conditions become increasingly inhospitable for the fish upon which migratory birds depend as a source of food.
In addition to higher levels of salts, a decline in fresh water inflow will also increase the proportions and influence of other nutrients that agricultural runoff brings to the Sea such as nitrogen and selenium , which will worsen water quality and negatively impact fish and birds. The increased proportion of such nutrients has already led to algae growth in the Sea, which has proven fatal for fish under certain conditions.
For example, in a single day in August , 7. According to news reports from that period, the resulting blanket of dead fish along the north side of the Sea was ten miles long and three miles wide. Moreover, a retreating Sea will dry out the established vegetation and wetlands that exist along the edges of the Sea, degrading that habitat for birds as well as the fish and insects that they eat. Additionally, desert pupfish—an endangered species under both the federal and state endangered species acts—live in creeks and drainage ditches around the Sea.
As the shoreline recedes, these pupfish populations may become isolated from one another. This would reduce the genetic diversity of existing pupfish populations, which could make them less able to adapt to disease or other environmental stresses. It would also prevent existing pupfish populations from moving back and forth between habitat areas as conditions change.
The changing Salton Sea has and will continue to have significant impacts for local residents. Additionally, the algae and nutrients in the Sea often cause it to emit a distasteful sulfurous odor when temperatures are high. These types of unpleasant conditions have contributed to a significant decline in recreation and tourism over the past several decades—which has correspondingly depressed home values and limited job opportunities and economic development around the Sea.
The unemployment rate for the region around the Sea is also significantly higher than the statewide average. For an optimal experience visit our site on another browser.
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