It’s the largest lake in the state — for now. But California’s
Salton Sea, just northeast of San Diego, is shrinking rapidly,
and a recent California Supreme Court ruling threatens to
exacerbate its decline. In March, the California court upheld a
massive water-transfer system, agreed upon in 2003, that diverts
billions of gallons of water from Imperial Valley farmland in
Southern California to residents of San Diego County. The plan,
known as the Quantification Settlement Agreement, is “the
largest agriculture-to-urban water transfer in the history of
the United States,” according to NPR. It will also cut off the
agricultural runoff that replenishes the Salton Sea, and could
cause the lake to dry up entirely in a matter of years. With a
depth of 52 ft. (16 m), the Salton Sea is not terribly deep, and
is reportedly losing almost a foot each year. Initially created
by a massive Colorado River flood in the early 1900s, it was a
remarkable oddity — an oasis in the middle of the desert — and
home to a popular res