dustinmulvaney.bsky.social
Professor, Environmental Studies🌎
San José State University @CalState.Bsky.social
Fellow, Payne Institute @ Colorado School of Mines, Climate & Community Institute @cplusc.bsky.social, Switzer Network. www.dustinmulvaney.com
📍Popeloutchom, Monterey Bay 🌅🦦
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These two are have been among the set I've started my American West course with. Both in January 2019.
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The one and only!
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Our story doesn't start with water, but land. The Salton Sea area has been used by people dating back well before European colonization and settlement, when Native American communities inhabited and utilized the area. For example, tools made from this feature are found hundreds of miles aways.
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In the case presented in the paper atop this thread, land fallowing to meet diminished water availability ultimately largely shapes where solar ends up getting built in Imperial Valley.
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This report below includes more on the water use dimensions of growing new industries in the area.
earthworks.org/releases/lit...
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With the project proposed on public lands, the federal government obviously had a much larger say in the outcome (RoW was approved via NEPA), whereas the ag sites were approved by the county (via conditional use permit/CEQA).
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Falling sea levels at the Salton Sea contribute to the region’s worsening air quality as the lake bed/playa is exposed, air pollution gets worse.
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
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An agreement to supply California cities and with Imperial Irrigation District water in 2003, plus water conservation measures by growers, have decreased water flows in to the Salton Sea.
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Technically an agricultural sump, the endorheic Salton Sea is California’s largest inland water body, and sustained by those Colorado River flows. Evaporating under the desert sun, the once freshwater body teeming with trout and is now twice as salty as the Pacific Ocean, soon too salty for tilapia.
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All irrigated by the Colorado River. The Imperial Irrigation District has "present perfected rights" to Colorado River water and is its largest user. www.landdesk.org/p/messing-wi...
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This turned the region into "America's Winter Garden."
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In 1905, a canal breach diverted the Colorado River into the Imperial Valley, flooding the region and forming what is now the Salton Sea. For two years, from 1905 to 1907, the Colorado
River continued to flow into the valley before engineers contained the breach.
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After colonial periods ruled by Spain and Mexico, US settlers included the valley in San Diego County. This map shows the county extending to the Colorado River. Imperial County was founded in 1907, shortly after the formation of the contemporary Salton Sea.
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For thousands of years, the area that is today Imperial Valley was home to Lake Cahuilla, a shallow, ephemeral lake over 200 feet below sea level which dried and refilled periodically over time as the Colorado River delta meandered. The area is the ancestral home to several tribes.
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Hi Emily! No paywall here: rdcu.be/epvQW
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Crowd is not dispersing. The are screaming Fuck ICE
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Yes! bsky.app/profile/dust...
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Oh neat, didn’t know you worked on all those. Calico was first big solar proposal I saw in Mojave desert, walked it with Jeff Aardahl, DoWs’ tortoise expert.. I found the first tortoise on the walk! Wrote about that sterling project in my book.
Cc @alidacantor.bsky.social @jjablair.bsky.social
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Bonus, two #superbOwls.
bsky.app/profile/dust...
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Careful siting would be needed in many spots because canals support burrowing owls and other habitat, the sea itself is twice as salty as the Pacific Ocean. The canals have the freshwater.
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I have not seen any proposal, but if you look at all the irrigation canals, and this doesn’t even have the ditches that drain into the sea, tons of opportunity to avoid evaporation.
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Here is a link to get past the paywall. (And two burrowing owls) rdcu.be/epvQW
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Here is a link to get past the paywall. (And two burrowing owls) rdcu.be/epvQW
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Hi! Just got the shareable link.
rdcu.be/epvQW
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SunZia’s first supplemental EA was required during NEPA but only because of a cabinet level intervention from the Defense Secretary.. that was about two years delay and then you add in five more years for the rerouting before they applied for the supplemental EIS.