Ken Calvert: “This bill takes a holistic approach to restoring the Salton Sea. At the request of this Secretary and the Salton Sea…”

“This bill takes a holistic approach to restoring the Salton Sea. At the request of this Secretary and the Salton Sea authority, $5 million is earmarked for wildlife resources studies to provide real-time science to support the decisionmaking processes during the feasibility study. Additionally, $3 million is included to improve water quality in the Alamo and New Rivers, the major sources of water for the Salton Sea. The New River, which has been explained earlier, is the most polluted river, in some estimation, in the North American continent. But if we do not address the sea salinity, we might as well just write the sea's ecosystem off. No leading scientist, none that I am aware of, dispute this fact. In a speech by Dr. Milt Freed, Chairman of the Science Subcommittee, delivered on July 29 at the U.S. EPA Ecosystems Restoration, a national symposium to bring together practitioners and researchers, he notes the salinity of the sea has reached 43,000 parts per million, a level that is 26 percent greater than ocean water. Salinity is increasing at a rate of approximately 1 percent per year and will soon reach a level that will cause a collapse in fish populations, thereby eliminating the food base for fish-eating birds that come to the sea. This will also end the sports fishery.”