Planners working on the preservation of the Salton Sea envision a smaller version surviving indefinitely, with some of the costs for its maintenance recovered by economic development which may include geothermal, the harvest of algae, or something else, officials said during a conference at UC Riverside.
“It’s not popular with residents in the area (of the Salton Sea), but it won’t be brought back to the way it was in the 1950s, 1960s and even the 1970s,” said Bruce Wilcox, who Gov. Jerry Brown appointed in May as secretary for Salton Sea Policy at the California Natural Resources Agency.
While the $80.5 million in the state’s budget for the Salton Sea “get’s us started” it is not enough to resolve the sea’s problems, Wilcox said.
That’s where economic development of the alternative energy potential of the sea could help as well as aggressive pursuits of grants, conference speakers said.