In the southern valleys of California, lies a desert oasis known as the Salton Sea. The inland sea is picturesque— from afar. Up close, the beauty begins to fade. The sea is a result of diverting the Colorado River to the Imperial Valley for agriculture, and it’s filled with fertilizer, pesticides, and salt. Decades of drought have caused the sea to evaporate at a rapid pace, exposing the lakebed, unearthing toxins, and endangering nearby communities. Adriana Torres Ceja and Olivia Rodriguez Mendez are both residents of the Eastern Coachella Valley and graduates of the Youth Leadership Institute. They have seen firsthand the negative impacts of the shrinking sea. Adriana reads a poem she wrote about the Salton Sea, and Olivia talks about the documentary she helped make to ensure her community’s voices are heard while the future of the sea remains uncertain.
In the southern valleys of California, lies a desert oasis known as the Salton Sea. The inland sea is picturesque— from afar. Up close, the beauty begins to fade. The sea is a result of diverting the Colorado River to the Imperial Valley for agriculture, and it’s filled with fertilizer, pesticides, and salt. Decades of drought have caused the sea to evaporate at a rapid pace, exposing the lakebed, unearthing toxins, and endangering nearby communities.
Adriana Torres Ceja and Olivia Rodriguez Mendez are both residents of the Eastern Coachella Valley and graduates of the Youth Leadership Institute. They have seen firsthand the negative impacts of the shrinking sea. Adriana reads a poem she wrote about the Salton Sea, and Olivia talks about the documentary she helped make to ensure her community’s voices are heard while the future of the sea remains uncertain.
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Episode 04: The Accidental Sea
[Adriana’s poem]
Not deserted, not dead nor dying
Instead
We Are the life, hope, and responsibility
That she needs now
More than ever
Without proactive action and results
She continues to bleed to cry
To dry
Breathing her tears in
And her cries for help out
Toxicities that leaves the lungs of our children and elders
In substantial danger
Existing health disparities that are now only widened for us
Us who want to see her succeed and safe
//
We’ve made her
We’ve drained her
Now we must take care of her
LEAH THOMAS:
As the Colorado River continues downstream, it snakes westward, dipping into the southern valleys of California.
There, before hitting the Hollywood Hills, lies a truly unique landscape. A desert oasis that once was the favorite vacation spot for movie stars. Where resorts were filled with laughter from happy families. And where migratory birds fed from a vast, tranquil body of water – the Salton Sea.
Today, this inland sea is still a picturesque addition to the desert. At least from afar. But as you approach, the beauty begins to fade. A sulfuric smell fills the air and you realize the beach is spongy from decomposing fish and bones.
Hi, I’m Leah Thomas. I’m the founder of Intersectional Environmentalist, an organization dedicated to amplifying the voices of communities of color fighting against environmental injustice. From Wonder Media Network, this is As She Rises. For our third season, we’re listening to stories of resilience from the Colorado River Basin.
Today, we're in the Salton Sea, where a thriving community is fighting to be heard in a place forever changed by the drought.
At the top of the show, you heard an excerpt from a poem by Adriana [AH-driana] (not A-driana) Torres Ceja [SAY-ha].
Adriana grew up in North Shore, California, a small town in the Eastern Coachella Valley just north of the Salton Sea. Through her tight knit community she found the Youth Leadership Institute - a youth organization in California that helps young people – especially young people of color – use their voice to create meaningful change.
And it was there that she met her mentor:
OLIVIA RODRIGUEZ MENDEZ: (02:19)
My name is Olivia Rodriguez Mendez, and I'm from the Eastern Coachella Valley and we're reciting in Torres Martinez Desert Cahuilla lands. I'm a senior program coordinator at Youth Leadership Institute. And, um, I run a program called Que Madre Media, where I support youth in advocating for mental health resources in their schools and in the community.
LEAH THOMAS:
Like Adriana, Olivia is a graduate of the Youth Leadership Institute and has spent most of her life in the Eastern Coachella Valley.
[musical cue]
California’s Coachella and Imperial Valleys hug the Salton Sea. These valleys are some of America's most productive agricultural regions, growing various fruits, vegetables and alfalfa. California is allocated more water from the Colorado River than any other state. And Imperial Valley farms receive about 80% of that water.
Which means the people who live in this region – like Olivia and her family – are predominantly farmworkers. But as Olivia told us, the area is much more than that.
OLIVIA RODRIGUEZ MENDEZ (21:57)
Yhe people that live here. That's, that's my favorite part of the Eastern Coachella Valley. I, I think for me, that's, that's why I love to call this place home. That's why this is in my home, right? I think a lot of folks, when they think about like Eastern Coachella Valley, they might think, um, if they know about our communities, right? They might think immediately like, oh, farm working community. But I love to think that we're more than that. My parents, a lot of my neighbors, my community, they do work in the fields, but they also come from different places within Mexico, or Latin America. So my community is really diverse in that sense.
OLIVIA RODRIGUEZ MENDEZ (22:41)
And, I love that. I love that there's different cultures, the different stories, there's different practices, traditions that, that are alive in my community. There's indigenous communities that have migrated here or have been here for forever. There's communities from Purepecha community who continue to like practice their traditions and also share that with, with others.
LEAH THOMAS
But the valley wasn’t always an agricultural powerhouse.
Before American colonists made their way west, the land in the Imperial Valley was home to the Cahuilla (kuh-we-yah) people - the ancestors of the present day Torres Martinez Desert Cahuilla Tribe. And long before there was a drought, the tribe would migrate in harmony with the area’s seasonal flooding.
The Imperial Valley was prone to flooding because it sits almost entirely below sea level. This means the Colorado would periodically overflow into the area, creating the Salton “Sink.” Temporarily forming a lake that then drained with the seasons.
But this rhythm changed once American settlers started venturing out west.
In 1901, the California Development Company dug irrigation canals to divert water from the Colorado River to the Imperial Valley. Irrigating what would otherwise be an inhospitable desert landscape. A small set of white families bought up most of the land and started farming industries. Many of their descendents still own the same land today.
Just a few years later, heavy flooding broke through the canals, and much of the river’s flow rushed into the valley. The water filled the sink, and this time it wasn’t a seasonal flood.
The resulting Salton Sea was 45 miles long and 20 miles wide. It reached depths of up to 50 feet. With nearly 130 miles of shoreline, the Salton Sea became California’s largest lake.
When the canals were finally repaired, water runoff from the surrounding agricultural fields continued to replenish the sea.
[pause]
By the 1940s, the Salton Sea had become a vacation hot spot for the rich and famous.
[Clip1 00-:10 / Clip 2 1:58 - 2:26]
Household names like Desi Arnaz, Frank Sinatra, and Bing Crosby were frequent visitors of the “Salton Riviera,” as it was called. The lake was even stocked with different fish species to boost sport fishing. When visitors needed something a little more active they could hop on a pair of water skis and ride around the lake before dancing the night away at the yacht clubs.
At its peak, The "Salton Riviera" attracted more annual tourists than Yosemite National Park.
The sea was a sort of colonizer imagination brought to life. An idyllic lake. For idyllic pastimes. Available to affluent Californians. It was all created by accident and then commodified to perfection.
But that imagination turned into a disaster.
OLIVIA RODRIGUEZ MENDEZ (04:24)
When I bring out folks for like the first time near the Salton Sea, it's right away it's like, wait, why is the ground? Why does it feel like that? Why am I sinking? It feels spongy. Um, or you hear cracking and you notice that it's kind of like, is it bones? What is this? Um, why does, why does it feel like this? And you'll, you'll notice especially even, even now, the shoreline is, is go, it's, it's, you know, it's evaporating. You're, you're seeing more land that's being exposed and you think about like, wait, what's happening here? Something's not right.
LEAH THOMAS
Since the Salton Sea’s water level was supported by irrigation runoff from Imperial Valley farms, the lake waters were soon filled with fertilizer, pesticides and really high quantities of salt. The Sea is also a terminal lake. There’s no outlet. Meaning water only exits through evaporation, which occurs rapidly under the hot desert heat. This dynamic creates a reduction effect that leaves the water very salty. As in, 50% saltier than the Pacific Ocean. Causing a majority of the sea’s fish to die and wash up onto the shoreline. Leaving behind rotting carcasses and terrible smells.
With little fish left for sport, the lake water too salty to swim in, the tourists that flocked to the Salton Sea, quickly abandoned the area.
The decades of drought that have hit the Colorado River are now affecting the Imperial Valley farmers. Less water for farms means less runoff for the Salton Sea. So the sea is evaporating at a rapid pace, exposing more shoreline and revealing a greater threat: the toxic lakebed.
OLIVIA RODRIGUEZ MENDEZ (16:02)
A lot of the community members, if you talk to them, especially the ones that live right next to the shoreline, they'll start telling you, like, when I moved here, I started experiencing like these respiratory issues that are totally new to me or my kids the younger children that are in the communities, some of them have nose bleeds, some of them are developing asthma.
LEAH THOMAS
As a result of the pesticide-laden farm runoff, the Salton Sea lakebed is full of toxins. As more of it is exposed, a combination of the lakebed and fishbone particles are swept up in the wind, creating fine, toxic dust that is causing Olivia’s community to suffer from severe health problems: ranging from asthma and nosebleeds to bronchitis and lung disease.
OLIVIA RODRIGUEZ MENDEZ (25:56)
Especially if it's a windy day out. I feel like folks might try not to go out outdoors, because they themselves or their children are experiencing these health symptoms. And, and for myself, I live right near it to a walking distance. And now that I'm a mother, when I'm walking outside, those thoughts come to me of, should I be out here? Should I drive to walk my baby somewhere else?
OLIVIA RODRIGUEZ MENDEZ (26:43)
A lot of mothers too that I've been talking to, it's like, we wanna continue to, for this to be home for our kids. We want 'em to grow up with the best health outcomes possible. And we know the salton sea, it's definitely impacting their health.
Olivia: (16:02)
So what our communities are left with, it's just kind of like this exposure to all the dust, the particles that are, that have been there, and with the winds that come, now we're breathing that in.
LEAH THOMAS:
As the Salton Sea continues to shrink, more of the toxic lakebed is exposed. Not only is there less water due to the drought, water traditionally allotted for Imperial Valley farms has been rerouted to feed another crisis in the basin: urban sprawl.
In the early 2000s, Imperial Valley Farms and the city of San Diego struck a deal. San Diegans received more water from the Colorado River in exchange for funding to support water conservation projects. So, the Salton Sea isn’t likely to see an influx of water anytime soon.
[pause]
There is technically a plan to address the public health crisis. In 2017, the state established the Salton Sea Management Program and the Ten Year Plan. The goal is to improve conditions by building new wildlife habitats and attempting to manage dust levels. While the plan is important, it doesn’t mention the communities around the Sea, what they would like, or how the Sea affects them.
OLIVIA RODRIGUEZ MENDEZ (05:16)
A lot of people often ask, why, what are they doing? What's happening here to fix this? It seems like there's an issue here, but I don't see much happening. And I feel like that's a lot of frustration that community shares. It's like we, this, this has been our reality for years, and we've yet to see a la uh, uh, you know, urgency action taken to, um, to try and do anything. We hear a lot of money coming in. We hear a lot about projects, but we have yet to see, uh, much done near our communities.
LEAH THOMAS:
Businesses are finding new ways to profit off the Salton Sea.
Due to increased demand for electric vehicles, the state is searching for lithium resources. Recently, the California Energy Commission estimates that there’s enough natural lithium in the area to meet all of the United States’ projected future demand, and 40% of the world’s demand, for electric vehicle batteries.
The problem here is that lithium mining also requires large quantities of water and could create contamination risks of its own. And once again, Olivia and her neighbors are left out of the conversation.
OLIVIA RODRIGUEZ MENDEZ (29:04)
There's this pushback from community members of like, Hey, we need to stop thinking about investments for the benefit of investors, we need to talk about investments in a way that it does benefit community members, the environment. It's like, if, if we're, you know, like changing the landscape, you know, like if, if we're losing ag fields, that means a lot of folks, what happens to their jobs? What happens to their futures? And I, I feel like that's a voice that's, that's resonating with a lot of like folks of, you know, who's making these futures for us, right? And they're not including us. They're not including, um, our futures and the folks that live here. Um, so there's just a different, uh, huge contrast I feel bet between like the community members' needs and their voices and then folks who are making these decisions, um, that aren't taking us into account.
LEAH THOMAS:
But it seems there are always resources in the desert for the rich.
Just down the road from Olivia's home, an over 300-acre exclusive resort for car collectors was built. Featuring multi-million dollar villas. Some of the only paved roads with street lights near her home were built solely for this racetrack.
60 miles north, Palm Springs - "the golf capital of the world" - is not struggling for water access. On the contrary, it boasts more than 130 perfectly watered golf courses.
[pause]
From the outside, the Salton Sea is seen as one thing – an abandoned wasteland with profit potential. But the people who live there see it differently.
So, fed up with feeling forgotten, Olivia teamed up with her now husband, Bryan Mendez, and reporters from Coachella Unincorporated to put their community at the forefront of the conversations regarding the Salton Sea.
The result was the award winning documentary: Estamos Aquí: A Community Documentary. The film whose name translates to “we are here”, blends images of the Salton Sea with the daily life of the neighboring community. The film’s first goal was to reclaim the narrative of the region.
OLIVIA RODRIGUEZ MENDEZ (30:21)
In the traditional news media and the local news channels, um, we would always hear stories about the Eastern Coachella Valley portrayed in a negative light. We're like, that's not true. Like, there's also, there's great things that happen here. To this day, there's not really dedicated a lot of dedicated reporters to the Eastern Coachella Valley. Um, if, if you look at one of the local newspapers, they just have like one, person focusing on all the Eastern Coachella Valley communities.
OLIVIA RODRIGUEZ MENDEZ (31:02)
We just kept hearing that narrative a lot about the Salton Sea. Um, like it's abandoned, it smells bad, or they would focus a lot when it was like, it quote unquote thriving, um, for like folks in Hollywood, like, hey, it, back in the day, it, it would have more tourists than Yosemite National Park and all these narratives. So I I I was part of, um, Coachella Incorporated, which is one of the, uh, youth led media program in the Eastern Coachella Valley. And, um, and we just asked our program manager, like, we wanna write a story about the Salton Sea. We wanna work specifically on a documentary.
LEAH THOMAS:
The team’s second goal was to give a face to those who were affected most by the health issues of the Salton Sea. And to show that their community should be included in making decisions about their home.
OLIVIA RODRIGUEZ MENDEZ (34:53)
And it was interesting because when we, when I would, we would reach out to folks to be interviewed, they would kind of tell us like, but what do I know about the science? I'm not a scientist. I'm just going to work from sun up to sundown, and I come home and we kind of just like, well, you wanna share us your experience, your experience also has a lot of worth right? To everything that's happening in our communities.
OLIVIA RODRIGUEZ MENDEZ (32:31)
And the biggest thing that a lot of, uh, folks were saying, even when we were interviewing them for the documentary, was that we're here, that's one of the words that really like, um, stood out, um, when we were asking, what would you want folks to know about the salton sea, about the communities that surround the Salton Sea? And the biggest, um, message that we received back was, we're here Estamos Aqui.
[pause]
OLIVIA RODRIGUEZ MENDEZ (33:18)
We want folks to know that we're here. And, um, if the conversations are happening around the salton see if, um, decisions are being made around the Salton Sea, we need to be a part of all that process.
[pause]
…And also a biggest driving force was we didn't want folks to immediately think about the Salton Sea it as a place that's dying. And, um, a place that, you know, where you find, uh, fish bones, where you, um, smell like rotten eggs. We, while that's true, we also know that, our communities are strong, our communities are beautiful, our communities have, um, a lot to share and a lot of who they are.
OLIVIA RODRIGUEZ MENDEZ (34:06)
We have a lot of culture and a lot of strength, a lot of resilience that should also be, um, a part of all of this conversation. Uh, we, we have a lot of value to add to the salton sea.
LEAH THOMAS:
For Olivia and her team the project was a labor of love. They filmed in the desert heat where summer days would hit up to 120 degrees fahrenheit. They spent their nights piecing together footage in local coffee shops and neighbors’ houses.
In the end, the 30 minute documentary featured local artists, poets, and community members sharing their knowledge and experiences living by the Salton Sea. Politicians were not included.
OLIVIA RODRIGUEZ MENDEZ (35:41)
We premiered it at a local park. And that was also the first time that we were hearing folks like, Hey, that was the first time I didn't need to translate a, a, a documentary of film to my parents, right? We all enjoyed it. We were all able to kind of, um, resonate, make, make connections to it. And, and, and I think for us, that was the biggest thing, right? To highlight communities in a, in a positive light too, in their, with, you know, showcasing their experience with the Salton Sea, but also, um, the beauty that they carry and that they pass on to others.
LEAH THOMAS:
The documentary helped spark the imaginations of the residents of the Eastern Coachella Valley. For perhaps the first time, someone was asking them what they wanted to see in the Salton Sea. How they felt their home was changing and what should be done about it. Olivia's own family found new confidence.
OLIVIA RODRIGUEZ MENDEZ (34:53)
One of those persons was my dad who shared that like, oh, I, like, I, I don't have much to share. I'll share what I know. And once he saw himself in the big screen, that was the first time that he was kind of like, wow, I do know a lot.
OLIVIA RODRIGUEZ MENDEZ (35:41)
And I, I sounded really good, like on screen. Ever since that moment, he, he would just kind of look out for anything that was happening around the Salton Sea, or just kind of expand on what he was saying. Like, yeah, even throughout the years, he would tell me about the changes that he's seen and um, and the conversations he had with other coworkers and other neighbors. And a lot of folks also started to have those conversations in our premiere.
LEAH THOMAS
Olivia and her neighbors are demanding a seat at the table. But lawmakers aren’t putting forth community-centered solutions.
OLIVIA RODRIGUEZ MENDEZ (31:47)
We wanna make sure like community members are at the front and center of these conversations. That's when we're hearing about the 10 year plan and we're going to these meetings and just feeling the frustration of community members. Like, first of all, this meeting should be in Spanish and the translation is not really helpful. And, um, there's a lot of science terms that are being just thrown at us. We need to be part of this process in a truly meaningful way. Engagement doesn't mean just hosting a community meeting. It means truly having us be a part of this process from the beginning to the end.
OLIVIA RODRIGUEZ MENDEZ (42:09)
We just want clear answers. And, and that's been a difficult part of it. Just the frustration of not getting responses or like, okay, maybe we can't get that ideal but what are our options? We hear about like lithium projects, we hear about things that are coming in, and a lot of the community is quick to be like, wait, how is this gonna benefit our communities?
OLIVIA RODRIGUEZ MENDEZ (42:56)
We can't talk about economic development if we're not acknowledging the health impacts that our community's gonna face. I would want there to be kind of just a space for, you know, without talking about lithium or any business investments, I just want, like, how, how can we move things in a way that's keeping in mind the health of our environment in our communities, right? And how can we coexist with the Salton Sea?
LEAH THOMAS:
Coexisting with the Salton Sea may not be a possibility. At least, not in the way it once was.
The area may simply be too far from the days of living in harmony with seasonal floods. And the path to a livable solution remains unclear. The water levels in the Salton Sea are continuing to decline. And the sea is projected to lose three-quarters of its volume by the end of this decade. Exposing even more of the toxic lakebed.
Some public health experts are so concerned by the situation, that they're recommending the surrounding communities relocate.
For many, packing up and leaving is not an option. Many people in the area are undocumented immigrants. Even if a family is not of mixed immigration status, they may lack the financial resources to move to another city or town. And still, their livelihood is tied to the agricultural fields of the Imperial Valley.
OLIVIA RODRIGUEZ MENDEZ(16:02)
Where else do we go? Where else do we call home? Um, you know, a lot of issues intersect with that of like, affordable housing, um, environmental justice issues, all of these issues overlap, and it leaves one like really frustrated. This is a beautiful place. We wanna continue living here without, you know, having to, uh, face all of these issues that are impacting our health and the environment.
OLIVIA RODRIGUEZ MENDEZ (45:27)
That can't be the answer to this environmental crisis that we're experiencing, right? We can't just be moving away from these things. I think we need to face them head on and kind of, you know, what, like climate change is real. Our environmental issues that we face, we can't run away from them. Um, we can't ignore them. We can't kind of put a bandaid over it. Like this is a real issue that's affecting not just the Coachella Valley, but also like many communities, um, we know that this issue's gonna continue to only get worse as the Salton Sea continues to, to dry up.
OLIVIA RODRIGUEZ MENDEZ (46:07)
that's not sustainable is what I would say. That's not a sustainable option nationwide, that can't be our answer.
LEAH THOMAS:
The plight of the Salton Sea is another consequence of manipulating the flow of the Colorado River. As quickly as the area’s economy flourished, the environment floundered, and the residents were stuck in a literal rotting mess.
Yet along those same shores a vibrant community blends and preserves Latin American traditions. There may be many challenges ahead for Olivia and her neighbors. But as they’ve said time and time again, Estamos Aqui!
They haven’t quelled their resolve to protect their home. They haven’t given up on the imagination of a harmonious future for the landscape and its people. They just wish we could see the beauty in it too.
OLIVIA RODRIGUEZ MENDEZ (25:56)
For me. it's a beautiful, definitely beautiful sight to see. And I wish, and a lot of folks that I've talked to also share this is like, um, what can we do to like, take care of the salton sea, right?
OLIVIA RODRIGUEZ MENDEZ (26:43)
It deserves a lot of urgency, a lot of attention. It's it, um, because it's a really beautiful place.
LEAH THOMAS:
All season long, we’re traveling down the Colorado River and listening to stories of resilience.
In our next episode, we are flowing back over the border, to the southern edges of the Arizona desert. Where attempts to control water… have never really succeeded, in the first place. And where monsoons mark the seasons.
You can watch Estamos Aqui by clicking the link in the show notes.
You can support Olivia’s work at the Youth Leadership Institute at Y L I .org, where you can find information about current campaigns and donate. Thank you to Dr. Ann Cheney [chainy] and Hans Baumann [bow-man] for guidance on this episode’s topic.
[Imagine5 CTA]
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As She Rises is a Wonder Media Network Production.
Our creator and editor is Grace Lynch. Our executive producer is Jenny Kaplan. Emily Rudder is our Head of Development. The show is produced by Carmen Borca-Carrillo, Ale Tejeda , Brittany Martinez, Adesuwa Agbonile, and Sara Schleede. Original music by Andrea Kristinsdottir (Ahn Dre Uh) (Kristen’s Daughter) and Jessica Jarvis.
Until next time.