Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
Speaker 1: the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you as old ways so
Speaker 1: much for tuning in here. In twenty twenty four, we
Speaker 1: have returned with a bit of a follow up episode.
Speaker 1: Shout out to our super producer, the main man, mister
Speaker 1: Max Salt and c Williams.
Speaker 2: Shout out to the Hoover Dam. Shout out to the
Speaker 2: Hoover Dam that goes out there.
Speaker 3: You're gonna you got you shout into the damn and
Speaker 3: the damn shouts back.
Speaker 1: It sure does. Oh my gosh, I am I.
Speaker 2: Be called salty boy? Yeah, course, Well that's what we
Speaker 2: talk about.
Speaker 1: Salinity and that's Max, that's what Well, that's what we
Speaker 1: call you when we're just texting without you. I'm Ben Bullen.
Speaker 1: Here is the one and only mister Noel Brown. And
Speaker 1: as you may recall Ridiculous Historians when we when we
Speaker 1: did our recent episode series about the Hoover Dam, one
Speaker 1: thing we continually returned to is a strange hm we
Speaker 1: could call it a fun little accident sarcastically that went
Speaker 1: on to change the Southwest. It's called the Sultan Sea.
Speaker 1: And Noel, you have have have you been out to
Speaker 1: the Sultan Sea.
Speaker 3: I haven't, but I have seen the movie The Sultan
Speaker 3: Sea starring jeez Val Kilmer, and at the setting is
Speaker 3: the Sultan Sea, and it's very much the kind of
Speaker 3: Sultan Sea that you also will Sultan see depicted the
Speaker 3: Grand Theft Auto Door. It it wasn't really but thank you.
Speaker 3: You know, there's that character, I think his name's Trevor.
Speaker 3: He's sort of the like the he's a real salty dog.
Speaker 3: He represents sort of that kind of methy, sort of
Speaker 3: grizzled element. Yeah, in that game, and it is an
Speaker 3: explorable part of the map, and it's not called the
Speaker 3: Sultans I can't remember what it's called in the game,
Speaker 3: but it very much is based on that, and it
Speaker 3: is sort of like this weird, kind of creepy ghost town.
Speaker 3: Like it it was meant to be some sort of
Speaker 3: resorty kind of exactly, but that's right exactly. But it
Speaker 3: is a very sad and scary place and that's also
Speaker 3: what it's like in the film. But it didn't start
Speaker 3: that way. And oftentimes, you know, when we see things
Speaker 3: like abandoned malls, for example, or abandoned theme parks, there's
Speaker 3: a certain extra creep factor that goes along when something
Speaker 3: that was once tended with care and treated like it
Speaker 3: was gonna be this beautiful thing for all to enjoy
Speaker 3: and then it just kind of abandoned. But those remnants
Speaker 3: remain of what once was meant to be a place
Speaker 3: where children would play or people would water ski and
Speaker 3: hang out with their families and have picnics.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's dystopian indeed. And to be clear, folks, when
Speaker 1: we're saying salt and sea, we're talking about a specific place.
Speaker 1: We're not talking about salt and the sea that.
Speaker 2: Dultan has anything to do with it.
Speaker 3: I think the name is just a geographical but it
Speaker 3: turns out that salt is a big part of the story.
Speaker 3: So it's very easy to make that mistake. But I'm
Speaker 3: glad you you nip that one in the bud right
Speaker 3: off the rip. But we found out about this again,
Speaker 3: we'd all been aware of it, but from our wonderful
Speaker 3: tour guide at the Hoover Dam, where there's a yeah,
Speaker 3: that's right, who was a believe an employee of the
Speaker 3: what's it called. There's a name of like sort of
Speaker 3: land reclamation correct and their job is to deal with
Speaker 3: watersheds and all of that stuff in the way water
Speaker 3: resources are used in the south Southwest. Yeah, they don't
Speaker 3: care what happens on the East Ghost and a shout
Speaker 3: out to you, Hoover, mataf you're tuning in. That was
Speaker 3: very clear in our conversations. The Sultan Sea is going
Speaker 3: to be familiar to anybody who lives in or around California.
Speaker 3: It is, through pure accident and misadventure, California's largest lake.
Speaker 1: And we know that the basin has been home to
Speaker 1: a cyclical rise and fall of different bodies of water,
Speaker 1: pretty much due to the Colorado rivers propensity for flooding
Speaker 1: and the uh.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the river is of course what is harnessed by.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And the Sultan Sea was formed in its current
Speaker 1: iteration pretty recently in the Grand Scheme of things. Back
Speaker 1: in nineteen oh five, Colorado River floodwater breached a canal.
Speaker 1: We mentioned this in the Hoover series and flowed into
Speaker 1: what was called the Sultan Sink's It's like how a
Speaker 1: poetkemon evolves. It's the Sultan Sink when there's not water.
Speaker 1: It's the Sultan Sea when the Colorado River has a
Speaker 1: bad day.
Speaker 4: And it has reached his final form, so it's it's
Speaker 4: a ground Pokemon with not water, but then it comes
Speaker 4: a water ground hybrid Pokemon.
Speaker 2: Don't talk about Pokemon with me around, I'll go, well,
Speaker 2: got to get them all.
Speaker 4: I guess there's a two thirty eight on Pokemon Crystal.
Speaker 4: One time the two fifty and then the battery inside
Speaker 4: of it died. As an adult I was doing this.
Speaker 1: Pokemon Go, by the way, is a surveillance skim.
Speaker 2: I just have to say it, you know.
Speaker 3: But it's one of those things where it's just so fun.
Speaker 3: I willingly give up my data for the privilege of
Speaker 3: catching a I can't even think of the name of
Speaker 3: a Pokemon. Let's say, a wild snore lax in my backyard.
Speaker 1: There is just a lot. There are a lot of them,
Speaker 1: and there's only one salt and sea this time around.
Speaker 1: Historic evidence and geological studies show that the Colorado River
Speaker 1: has created something like the Sultan Sea numerous times over
Speaker 1: the past thousands of years. The first lake to arise
Speaker 1: occurs in about seven hundred CE, and this is because
Speaker 1: the Colorado River shifted its course due to silt, which
Speaker 1: is also the silt as part of why the Hoover
Speaker 1: Dam was built.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 3: I believe that was called Lake Coahuela Kahuila. I'll go
Speaker 3: with that. Yeah, seven hundred AD. And according to the
Speaker 3: Sultan Sea Authority, the present day Sultan Sea is that
Speaker 3: body of water that occupies the Sultan Basin. But to
Speaker 3: your point, Ben, there have been many that came before.
Speaker 3: The ancient evidence or geologic evidence of the moving shoreline
Speaker 3: does indicate that Lake Kohila occupied that basin until just
Speaker 3: around three hundred years ago.
Speaker 1: So people lived and died there.
Speaker 2: It wasn't a prefermanent thing in their experience.
Speaker 3: And then from eighteen twenty four to nineteen four the
Speaker 3: Colorado River starts to flood that salt and basin and
Speaker 3: it happens the flooding no less than eight times. In
Speaker 3: eighteen forty, for example, floodwaters created a salt lake that
Speaker 3: was the measured three quarters of a mile long and
Speaker 3: about half a mile wide. And then in June of
Speaker 3: eighteen ninety one, another overflow of the Colorado River created
Speaker 3: a lake thirty miles long and ten miles wide.
Speaker 1: Oof For everybody listening who is not in the United States,
Speaker 1: that is a big lake. You know about the vest
Speaker 1: leaves that, yeah, because we'll do anything not to use
Speaker 1: the metric system, and we want to give credit where
Speaker 1: it's due, want to shout out. I don't know about you, guys,
Speaker 1: but I love learning about specific repositories of expertise and knowledge.
Speaker 1: So with great acclaim, we have to thank the Sultan
Speaker 1: Sea Authority, which is a real thing and shock full,
Speaker 1: dare I say, overflowing with resources and research about this,
Speaker 1: about this somewhat unique erstwhile body of water there again,
Speaker 1: gone again.
Speaker 2: Erstwhile on Fargo.
Speaker 3: You guys noticed that you guys watched Fargo whenever they
Speaker 3: do the next time or previously, they say erstwhile, Oh nice,
Speaker 3: because I guess that's sort of a Midwestern.
Speaker 2: It's cool, it's just clever.
Speaker 3: That show really pays a lot of attention to detail,
Speaker 3: and if you haven't watched it in the new season,
Speaker 3: is pretty spectacular, dare I say, very triggering for some folks.
Speaker 3: That deals with a lot of topics and depictions of abuse,
Speaker 3: you know, domestic violence and such, so treadlight, but we're.
Speaker 1: Talking about ecological abuse. That's like, you need to talk
Speaker 1: about silt. When we got to talk about the silt,
Speaker 1: you haven't thought of the silt folks. So is the
Speaker 1: true noal that no one will ever know for sure
Speaker 1: how many times the saltan scenk has becomeless sultancy like
Speaker 1: I think. We know it's at least eight times, but
Speaker 1: we don't know how far back this phenomenon goes. We
Speaker 1: we mainly know the time that humans messed.
Speaker 3: It up, that's right, Yeah, and that was specifically, you know,
Speaker 3: involving the Hoover Dam. The construction of the Hoover Dam
Speaker 3: while a fantastic feat of engineering, and you know the
Speaker 3: power of science to tame nature and harness, you know,
Speaker 3: the wilds of a planet Earth, you know, to the
Speaker 3: benefit of humankind.
Speaker 2: Things can go a little wrong.
Speaker 3: You know, from time to time there are byproducts and
Speaker 3: let's just call it collateral damage can occur when such
Speaker 3: a massive undertaking is undertaken.
Speaker 1: There we go love it, yes, because humans. Humans can
Speaker 1: be accused of many things over the course of history,
Speaker 1: but they can't be accused of lacking ambition even when
Speaker 1: they should. So these these heavy silt loads become an
Speaker 1: issue when the California Development Company says, look at this thing,
Speaker 1: look at the Inland Valley. We could grow so much
Speaker 1: food here. All we have to do is sweet talk
Speaker 1: the Colorado River into feeding future crops.
Speaker 2: Come on, you know you want to feed those crops.
Speaker 1: Yeah. In nineteen oh one, they start digging these canals
Speaker 1: from the river meant to go through the Imperial Valley.
Speaker 1: But they again not to be two Dennis Reynolds here.
Speaker 1: They hadn't thought of the silt, and.
Speaker 3: Just really quickly, if anyone doesn't remember from high school geology,
Speaker 3: isn't silt just kind of very fine particulate matter that
Speaker 3: is carried by river current specifically, and it can, of course,
Speaker 3: you know, form deposits that can you know, clog up
Speaker 3: things and correct cause all kinds of problems, but also
Speaker 3: move the location of shorelines over time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, mud, little bits of sand, this this agglomerates, you know.
Speaker 1: This is actually this similar to the reason that you
Speaker 1: can't put coffee grounds into your disposal and your sink.
Speaker 3: It'll be okay for a minute, then over time, and
Speaker 3: I've had I have died on this hill with roommates
Speaker 3: who swear it's fine.
Speaker 2: It's nope.
Speaker 3: It might be okay for even a couple of months,
Speaker 3: but if you keep doing it, it's just gonna build
Speaker 3: up and like it gets ground more every time it
Speaker 3: gets you know, you run the disposal, but that just
Speaker 3: creates the stuff that builds up on the blades, and
Speaker 3: over time will eventually cause that thing to grind to
Speaker 3: a halt.
Speaker 1: And so so these poor folks at the California Development Company,
Speaker 1: I'm kidding, they're quite well off. They said, dang, it
Speaker 1: didn't it didn't work. We have to try to fix
Speaker 1: it somehow. And this led to a feedback loop of
Speaker 1: bad decisions and mistakes that ultimate led to what we
Speaker 1: call the Sultan Sea today and later led to the
Speaker 1: creation of what we call the Hoover Dam.
Speaker 3: And ben really quickly, and I just want to correct myself.
Speaker 3: I think I may have gotten order of operations a
Speaker 3: little off the mark a minute ago. It wasn't the
Speaker 3: Hoover Dam that caused this problem. The Hoover Dam was
Speaker 3: one of the solutions to dealing with this human made
Speaker 3: issue that sprung up around the Sultan Sea from previous
Speaker 3: attempts to dig irrigation canals from the Colorado River. Just so, yeah,
Speaker 3: it's the best band aid that America could come up with,
Speaker 3: I mean, but it still did spring forth from issues
Speaker 3: surrounding human intervention.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, absolutely, And the Sultan Sea is different from a
Speaker 1: lot of other bodies of water in the United States
Speaker 1: and indeed the world, because there's no real place for
Speaker 1: the water to go over land, it would have to evaporate.
Speaker 1: It's what's called an indorict lake e h EIC. So
Speaker 1: because the waters in the Salt and Sea have no
Speaker 1: it's like a crowded concert hall with no exit.
Speaker 2: O's got to have those exits, fire code.
Speaker 1: They've got no exit at all. These poor particles water.
Speaker 1: At least they have no runoff opportunity, which means they
Speaker 1: have two choices. They can either evaporate or they can
Speaker 1: sink into the ground. And this leads to a very
Speaker 1: high salinity level, a very high amount of salt in
Speaker 1: the salt and sea.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 3: The California Department of Fish and Wildlife say that the
Speaker 3: Sultan Sea has been maintained by irrigation runoff coming from
Speaker 3: the Imperial in Coachella Valleys and nearby rivers since it's
Speaker 3: very formation, and that those salinity levels, those levels of
Speaker 3: salt are currently more than fifty percent higher than ocean
Speaker 3: waters than the water of the Pacific specifically, and those
Speaker 3: levels continue to go up as time goes on. The
Speaker 3: salt in the Sultan Sea is sort of the culprit
Speaker 3: at play here regarding what we could, with very little
Speaker 3: hyperbole referred to as an ecological disaster, and we're going
Speaker 3: to get to that. But for a time, it was
Speaker 3: kind of awesome, you know, it was like this this oasis, like,
Speaker 3: you know, a beautiful little ocean, you know, a contained
Speaker 3: ocean that didn't go off into the horizon, that was
Speaker 3: just right there and therefore could be used for things
Speaker 3: like recreation.
Speaker 1: And max if we could, could we get some like
Speaker 1: retro as, you know, maybe forties fifties resort music, swinging y, Yeah,
Speaker 1: picture it this way, lay.
Speaker 4: Back, So just use the music from the Adolpho Sax
Speaker 4: episode Sweet Saxiphying right here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, make it sexy.
Speaker 1: So picture this, Someone says, Dolly, and I know the
Speaker 1: land on the coast is expensive for vacations, but we
Speaker 1: have a happening scene in inland. We have a sea
Speaker 1: you see, all our own. This was like a hot
Speaker 1: spot for tourists, for people who own a boat but
Speaker 1: honestly cannot afford marina fees in more expensive areas.
Speaker 3: That's a good point, because it wasn't like at this
Speaker 3: point it was sort of a place for the halves,
Speaker 3: but maybe the haves, not.
Speaker 2: Quite as much as the top tier halves. You know.
Speaker 3: It was almost more like having a condo rather than
Speaker 3: like a mansion, or like owning a timeshare rather than
Speaker 3: you know, some sort of like beachside you know, get away,
Speaker 3: you know, for your summer home. So it did create
Speaker 3: this sort of community that was very attractive to developers.
Speaker 3: And that was also largely because those high salt level
Speaker 3: you know what happens when you've got salty waters, things
Speaker 3: float better.
Speaker 2: So people with boats.
Speaker 3: Were using it because it was able to make speedboats
Speaker 3: go faster. And I believe there were some records that
Speaker 3: were set, you know, using speedboats in the waters of
Speaker 3: the Saltan Sea during the first half of the twentieth century.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's more fun to operate a boat on this
Speaker 1: buoyant brine.
Speaker 2: There. We go too much alliteration, but we'll keep it.
Speaker 1: So in the nineteen fifties, the California Department of Fish
Speaker 1: and Game gets into the mix and they say, hey,
Speaker 1: let's jush this up a little bit more. Let's get
Speaker 1: people to come not just to play around on their
Speaker 1: boats or to have a lake side vacation. Let's also
Speaker 1: draw in the fishing crowds, So we're going to stock
Speaker 1: this lake. Stocking a lake. This happens all the time
Speaker 1: in Georgia, which has no natural lakes as a state.
Speaker 1: It's a very weird fact, but you're welcome. The process
Speaker 1: of stocking a lake means that you take a bunch
Speaker 1: of different kinds of fish that people like to fish
Speaker 1: for recreationally. You put enough in that even someone who's
Speaker 1: kind of bad at fishing is almost guaranteed to catch one.
Speaker 3: It's almost like those wildlife resorts where they have like
Speaker 3: penned in kind of deer that really have nowhere to go.
Speaker 3: So it's it sort of lowers the sporting quot just
Speaker 3: a little bit, like it's it's a little bit like
Speaker 3: a shooting fish in a very large barrel. But you know,
Speaker 3: it was, it was popular. And also like deep deep
Speaker 3: sea fishing is certainly more expensive and you can't you
Speaker 3: can fish off a pier, of course, but you're limited,
Speaker 3: you know, in terms of coastal areas where you can fish,
Speaker 3: you know, for people that maybe don't have the money
Speaker 3: to you know, own a trawler or whatever.
Speaker 2: They're really crap.
Speaker 3: Those things are called that can go deep sea fishing,
Speaker 3: so you know, since this is a lake, you can
Speaker 3: fish right off the side.
Speaker 1: And this is where a guy named Pen of Fillips
Speaker 1: enters our story. It's the end of the nineteen fifties
Speaker 1: and our buddy Pen is developing property. He says, look,
Speaker 1: this is going to be the next big thing. This
Speaker 1: happens all the time in real estate. People will take
Speaker 1: out of the way land and attempt to make it,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of like a resort, a live laugh, love,
Speaker 1: a little all in one area. And so our buddy
Speaker 1: Pen buys thousands of acres of land. He gets involved
Speaker 1: in speculation. He's also selling lots of land around the
Speaker 1: western shore of the Salt and Sea. And he says,
Speaker 1: what I'm going to do really is I'm going to
Speaker 1: be like Romulus and Remiss founding this great civilization. But
Speaker 1: this is going to be Sultan City and it's going
Speaker 1: to be tourism, and I want people. Basically, what you
Speaker 1: want when you're building these kind of things. You want
Speaker 1: a large traveling, seasonal population, but you want people to
Speaker 1: live there year round. You want to make it good
Speaker 1: enough that it becomes like a mall people never leave.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, the West coast of the United States
Speaker 3: is sort of seasonless largely, so you know, the weather
Speaker 3: kind of maintains pretty pretty consistently throughout the year.
Speaker 2: So it makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 3: But this would definitely have been sort of a getaway,
Speaker 3: could have been considered a getaway for folks that maybe
Speaker 3: lived more in the city, you know, more like in
Speaker 3: Los Angeles or in the valley perhaps, or in some
Speaker 3: of the surrounding part like it's on or like I
Speaker 3: think I hear Big Bear Lake come up a lot
Speaker 3: as far as like a place that the people in
Speaker 3: LA like to vacation to.
Speaker 2: But you start to.
Speaker 3: See the intention springing up around this development, you know,
Speaker 3: with streets named things like Seaview Avenue and Sea Missed
Speaker 3: Place and all of these very evocative kind of names.
Speaker 3: And again a lot of this information is coming from
Speaker 3: a combination of the Kiri Picone article on that all
Speaker 3: that's interesting and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.
Speaker 3: But so you start to see the groundwork being laid
Speaker 3: by Penn Phillips' efforts, and it starts to seem like
Speaker 3: this is going to transform into what he had envision
Speaker 3: but then, all of a sudden, as though blessed with
Speaker 3: some sort of secret knowledge, Phillips ditches the whole thing
Speaker 3: in nineteen sixty and we don't we still don't really know,
Speaker 3: Like what tipped him off. Was he talking to, you know,
Speaker 3: ecologists and environmental experts, and he sort of probably got
Speaker 3: the tip that maybe this was not going to progress
Speaker 3: in the way that he had hoped.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was looking at this and probably, although it's
Speaker 1: tough to assign motivation and prescients, there are a couple
Speaker 1: of possibilities. Maybe things just went upside down for him financially,
Speaker 1: very like sooner than a thought. And or it may
Speaker 1: have been a situation where he got the amount of
Speaker 1: money that he wanted and then handed it off, like
Speaker 1: he may have not known what was about to happen,
Speaker 1: but he In either case, he ghost in nineteen sixty,
Speaker 1: and Sultan City kind of becomes a ghost, like those
Speaker 1: massive towns that are built on real estate speculation in
Speaker 1: the nation of China. There's if you went to Sultan
Speaker 1: City after nineteen sixty, you would see something that looked undone,
Speaker 1: like the developers in a video game had not quite
Speaker 1: gotten to that part of the map. There's like, there
Speaker 1: are a couple homes, there was a sewage system. They had,
Speaker 1: you know, as he said, they had the QTT names
Speaker 1: for different streets. But it started to go downhill almost
Speaker 1: immediately because there wasn't new investment coming in. And this
Speaker 1: gave it that dystopian fallout esque vibe that we were
Speaker 1: foreshadowing earlier. And to be clear, people were still living there,
Speaker 1: just not as many as Penn had originally hoped. And
Speaker 1: so if we fast forward to the night teen seventies,
Speaker 1: we get to the real ecological disaster. The bill starts
Speaker 1: to come do and tourists don't love unpleasant things.
Speaker 3: No, And we talked about how the salt levels kind
Speaker 3: of were on the rise and all of this shoreline
Speaker 3: flooding was also on the rise. You had farm farming
Speaker 3: communities nearby, you know, I mean if you go outside
Speaker 3: of LA you know, places like Modesto and you know
Speaker 3: a little bit further out from Los Angeles proper, it
Speaker 3: is super rural and a lot of farming going on
Speaker 3: out there. You know, things like oranges and various crops,
Speaker 3: you know, avocado, whatever. But they have to be fertilized,
Speaker 3: and there were times where regulations surrounding you know, what
Speaker 3: kind of fertilizer could be used and how it had
Speaker 3: to be dealt with were not nearly as strict as
Speaker 3: they are today. So you had a lot of runoff
Speaker 3: from these nearby farms causing increasing imbalances in the kind
Speaker 3: of chemical makeup of the waters of the salt and sea.
Speaker 3: Pair that with that rising salinity and you start to
Speaker 3: get these massive fish kills with like fish bones, skeletons
Speaker 3: kind of piling up on the shore. A lot of
Speaker 3: those fish that had been stocked, you know, the various species,
Speaker 3: I believe, including let's see, we had croaker corvina, Yeah,
Speaker 3: something like I think sargo. I'm not a fish scientist,
Speaker 3: but those were several of the species. They just began
Speaker 3: to die off, and it was only I think a
Speaker 3: few of the more resilient species that even stuck around
Speaker 3: at all.
Speaker 1: Right, and this included some endangered species like the desert pupfish.
Speaker 1: Coupled with this, there are a number of biblical level storms.
Speaker 1: If you had a resort barely holding on, guess what,
Speaker 1: there's an act of God coming your way. It's not
Speaker 1: in your favor, So a lot of people were forced
Speaker 1: to pull out because the numbers just weren't working as
Speaker 1: an investment. If you fast forward now, you'll see, as
Speaker 1: you said, just a few very resilient fish species surviving
Speaker 1: for now. And yeah, and just like just like the
Speaker 1: Marinas a few years back, these things are barely holding on.
Speaker 1: This gets even worse in two thousand and three. There's
Speaker 1: something called the Quantification Settlement Agreement. Shout out to the
Speaker 1: California Department of Fish and Wildlife if you'd like to
Speaker 1: learn more. Its street name is the QSA. Basically, it's
Speaker 1: a covenant between states that share the Hoover Dam and
Speaker 1: the Colorado River. And we know California has historically been
Speaker 1: the least favorite state in this agreement because they tend
Speaker 1: to use more water than the originally agreed amount or limit.
Speaker 1: And we also have to say, in California's defense, it
Speaker 1: is a country all its own, Like if you look
Speaker 1: at the GDP of California, it's a huge country. You know,
Speaker 1: it's quite unique in that regard. And for a long
Speaker 1: period of time, everybody just sort of made do and
Speaker 1: they said, Okay, we'll figure it out next year, we'll
Speaker 1: keep kicking the can down the length of this dam
Speaker 1: because Nevada and Nevada and Arizona never used their full
Speaker 1: quota of water, so people were just sliding the leftover
Speaker 1: to California. But problem is, not every place out west
Speaker 1: is like the Saltan city idea. There are thriving, huge populations,
Speaker 1: huge cities that in some cases you could argue should
Speaker 1: not exist. Sorry, Las Vegas, but shout out to you.
Speaker 3: Just slap there in the middle of the California desert,
Speaker 3: you know, by the mafia. The founding of Las Vegas
Speaker 3: is fascinating, as we discovered when we were out there
Speaker 3: not too long ago. But all of this to say
Speaker 3: that this QSA imposes some pretty serious water conservation measures
Speaker 3: that ultimately have the unintended consequence of drying up the
Speaker 3: salt and sea. And in doing that, again, I'm not
Speaker 3: a water expert here, but it caused the salinity to
Speaker 3: rise even further as the sea was drying up. And
Speaker 3: I'm not quite sure why that is. Maybe Matter or
Speaker 3: Max you have an idea.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So what I got through this research, and I
Speaker 4: mean shout out to the California Department of Fish and
Speaker 4: Wildlife because the right up on. This is very long.
Speaker 4: If we did the right up alone, it would be
Speaker 4: like an entire episode. But basically the gist of it is,
Speaker 4: there's a ton of there's a ton of salt in
Speaker 4: the salt sea, but the water getting dumped into the
Speaker 4: salt and sea is fresh water, so dilute it down.
Speaker 4: But so as California was getting less and less water
Speaker 4: because you know, Nevada and Arizona needed more less water
Speaker 4: going to the crops to run off, and those parts
Speaker 4: about becoming more efficient, unintended consequences. Basically, there's less fresh
Speaker 4: water getting dumped into this very high salt count and
Speaker 4: the water can't go anywhere, so what happens to it?
Speaker 1: So it evaporates or it goes into the ground, which
Speaker 1: causes the salinity to naturally increase. And the problem is
Speaker 1: that the wildlife in this area is not the kind
Speaker 1: of wildlife that has evolved to exist in these changing circumstances.
Speaker 1: The Sultancy in its current iteration for Everybody Playing Along
Speaker 1: at Home has only existed for around a century, which
Speaker 1: is very short term in the life span of bodies
Speaker 1: of water, and in just that amount of time, since
Speaker 1: it was the only show in town, ecologically, it became
Speaker 1: a huge resource for things like migratory birds, for resident
Speaker 1: animal populations like our pal the pupfish, some endangered species.
Speaker 1: So because the because the rest of California was getting
Speaker 1: developed at such a hectic pace, they were losing wetlands
Speaker 1: and the Sultan Sea became the replacement. It became the
Speaker 1: we have wetlands at home. It's like the wish version
Speaker 1: of a wetland on et sea. So these these birds
Speaker 1: in the North American continent need a pit stop, especially
Speaker 1: if they're migratory, and the Sultan Sea becomes that. We
Speaker 1: just don't think it will last very long. It's an
Speaker 1: unsustainable situation because the marine animals are not going to
Speaker 1: be able to survive that increasing salinity. There's a reason
Speaker 1: another very briny sea is called the Dead Sea. Super
Speaker 1: great for boats, not super great floating, yeah, not super
Speaker 1: great for freshwater fish though, and this leads us to
Speaker 1: the next turn in the story. The demise of the
Speaker 1: Sultan Sea had consequences beyond the water itself. As the
Speaker 1: sea declined, we see things. We see things become increasingly dystopian.
Speaker 1: The human population that used to be kind of like
Speaker 1: novou Riche aspirational, middle class, upper middle class tourists. They leave,
Speaker 1: and the folks who remain there just like the Just
Speaker 1: like the salt that remains in the Sultan Sea, it
Speaker 1: gets weirder and weirder with each passing year. The vibe
Speaker 1: becomes strange.
Speaker 3: Right, more and more dystopian. I'm a Newburger, writing for CNBC,
Speaker 3: had this to say. The vision for Saltan City was clear,
Speaker 3: a bustling resort community along the crystal blue waters the
Speaker 3: Sultan Sea. The city's reality is more grim. Instead of
Speaker 3: a vacation spot, it feels like a post apocalyptic ghost town.
Speaker 3: Most of the homes were demolished or never built. The
Speaker 3: palm trees are stumps, and the sea, while beautiful, is toxic.
Speaker 3: And you know, she actually interviewed Frank Ruez from the
Speaker 3: Audubon Society. The Audubon Society has a Sultan Sea program,
Speaker 3: and he said people here used to fish, swim, bring
Speaker 3: their boats. They went from living in paradise to living
Speaker 3: in hell.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that is not hyperbole. This also this also
Speaker 1: affects the surrounding land. Imperial County remains one of the
Speaker 1: poorest counties in the state of California, and there's a
Speaker 1: problem with the smell. That's right, fans are always sunny.
Speaker 1: We're doing that Dennis Reynolds joke because it works. We're
Speaker 1: not going to give you the full quote because we're
Speaker 1: a family show. But the smell became a huge issue,
Speaker 1: and it's also a teachable moment for our friends in
Speaker 1: Utah who are worried about the stench of the Great
Speaker 1: Salt Lake. It's because of the chemical changes. You know,
Speaker 1: the dust is blowing over the dry lake beds as
Speaker 1: the salt and sea slowly evaporates, and that means you're
Speaker 1: getting hydrogen sulfide. You're also getting dangerous stuff like arsenic
Speaker 1: and selenium. And people who live there, honestly, people who
Speaker 1: are affected by it. Many families cannot afford to move,
Speaker 1: so they just have to put up with this horrible
Speaker 1: smell and possible health effects in the long term.
Speaker 3: Right and Ruiz Frank Ruis from the Audubon said, it
Speaker 3: makes the point that we see happen all the time
Speaker 3: with things like this. If the sea were next to
Speaker 3: Los Angeles, it would have been fixed long ago. But
Speaker 3: it's next to poor communities and they don't have the
Speaker 3: political leverage. There are a lot of Latino families that
Speaker 3: live in this area, and it is just they just
Speaker 3: don't have the clout and representation to do something about it.
Speaker 3: Politicians in Los Angeles are concerned more with things directly
Speaker 3: affecting the residents of Los Angeles, and these folks seem
Speaker 3: to be up Poop Creek without a paddle.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're in the salt without the shaker for sure.
Speaker 1: And let's go to Robert Schettler, who is a spokesperson
Speaker 1: for the Imperial Irrigation District or IID. Schetler says, look,
Speaker 1: let's stay optimistic. Not all is lost. It is a
Speaker 1: huge problem. It does need attention yesterday, but we are
Speaker 1: happy to see that there are more. There are indications
Speaker 1: of positive efforts like small, small scale air quality mitigation plans,
Speaker 1: trying to reinstitute some vegetation that would help also prevent erosion,
Speaker 1: help some of that water go to a better use.
Speaker 1: And this all goes to the big question that people
Speaker 1: have been asking for decades and decades now and perhaps
Speaker 1: years in the past when earlier iterations of the sea evaporated.
Speaker 1: Is there a way to save the salt and sea?
Speaker 1: Back to our friend from all this interesting Kiri says, Look,
Speaker 1: people are trying. There's a there's a ten year plan
Speaker 1: that came out pretty recently in twenty eighteen where California's
Speaker 1: Natural Resource Agency. That's right, folks, there are a lot
Speaker 1: of like alphabet government agencies working on this. Our pals
Speaker 1: at the Natural Resource Agency said, look, over the next decade,
Speaker 1: we're going to make thirty thousand acres of habitat. We're
Speaker 1: going to suppress this dust that makes everything look so
Speaker 1: mad max on the lake shore, and then we're going
Speaker 1: to import new water. Nol importing new water. That's that's
Speaker 1: a that's a dicey one.
Speaker 3: Well, Ben, didn't this come up in a story that
Speaker 3: we've covered a couple of times on stuff they don't
Speaker 3: want you to know. That's right, And they were for
Speaker 3: a time, I believe, doing just that, like importing. Maybe
Speaker 3: it wasn't that they were importing water to dilute the salinity,
Speaker 3: but it was the kind of thing that would maybe
Speaker 3: work as a quick stopgap measure, but like over a
Speaker 3: long period of time, just isn't tenable.
Speaker 1: Right, The quest for a better band aid, just like
Speaker 1: the Hoover Dam. At the end of twenty twenty, only
Speaker 1: seven hundred and fifty five acres of dust suppression projects
Speaker 1: had started. They originally wanted there to be something like
Speaker 1: one thousand, seven hundred and fifty and no habitat projects
Speaker 1: have been started either. So again, you know, shout out
Speaker 1: Sam Cook, shout out Ben Sale, A change is gonna come.
Speaker 1: The question is will the change come in time. Everybody
Speaker 1: knows California is way behind schedule in any restoration efforts
Speaker 1: the Sultan Sea. But there are a lot of very good,
Speaker 1: very smart people working on this. They just have to
Speaker 1: work through red tape. They have to work through all
Speaker 1: these stakeholders, all these bureaucracies, and it's increasingly difficult to
Speaker 1: ask for more water in this part of the world.
Speaker 3: It's right, and it's not just water resource management agencies
Speaker 3: that are getting involved. There are also folks from the
Speaker 3: state's Energy Commission providing funding to various energy companies to
Speaker 3: look into lithium alternatives in order to grow geothermal development
Speaker 3: and lithium recovery in order to maybe provide clean energy
Speaker 3: and create some.
Speaker 2: Local jobs there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, and we have talked about this on our
Speaker 1: peer shows. Stuff they don't want you to know right now.
Speaker 1: Companies are dumping billions into what they're calling Lithium Valley.
Speaker 1: There is a quite ambitious vision, similar to that of
Speaker 1: Penn Phillips all those decades ago, to build a new
Speaker 1: tech forward community out in this area and maybe at
Speaker 1: some point the fix the smell. A lot of this
Speaker 1: is coming from a San Diego based company called Energy
Speaker 1: Source Minerals.
Speaker 3: And to your point, Ben, it's sort of like the
Speaker 3: focus is maybe shifted on things that could potentially be
Speaker 3: job creating and money making, so the ecological issue is
Speaker 3: maybe taken a little bit of a back seat, but
Speaker 3: it's not completely out of mind.
Speaker 2: Ruiz, who he talked about earlier, who.
Speaker 3: Is the director of the Audubon Society's Sultan Sea Initiative,
Speaker 3: had this to say about it. We have a moral
Speaker 3: obligation to look after the wildlife and communities affected by
Speaker 3: the Sultan Sea. I'd love to see the lake full
Speaker 3: of water, but it's not feasible. The solution is for communities,
Speaker 3: water districts, and environ mental groups to find common ground
Speaker 3: and protect it. And oftentimes this is me that common
Speaker 3: ground comes in the forms of things that can make
Speaker 3: money for people, and that can be seen as like
Speaker 3: the rising tide that perhaps raises the water level of
Speaker 3: the Sultan Sea. That cannot be in a society that
Speaker 3: is very much reliant on commerce the number one priority.
Speaker 2: It has to be just sort of a byproduct of
Speaker 2: all the other stuff. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately, that's where we get to the idea of conflicting
Speaker 1: interest of so called stakeholders. There's also another question. Maybe
Speaker 1: this is where we where we end it now. It's
Speaker 1: a question for everybody tuning in, everybody who lives at
Speaker 1: the Sultan Sea or is doing the work to try
Speaker 1: to save this quite eccentric body of water. What if
Speaker 1: we got the origin story wrong? What if the Sultan
Speaker 1: Sea should just be allowed to come and go. There
Speaker 1: are folks like Loggie who argue that, hey, maybe the
Speaker 1: sea just happens over thousands of years, probably before humans.
Speaker 1: To be honest, this sea has come and gone. Perhaps
Speaker 1: it's its formation and its current iteration was inevitable, and
Speaker 1: that famous canal breach back in nineteen oh five just
Speaker 1: sort of move the timeline right. And if that is
Speaker 1: the case, then should people spend all this time and
Speaker 1: effort to save a sea that just sort of is
Speaker 1: an indoor outdoor cat Ecologically it comes and goes, it
Speaker 1: comes and goes, Oh.
Speaker 2: My goodness, I don't think. No, no, it's a good question.
Speaker 3: And you know, and is you know, sometimes there are
Speaker 3: byproducts of naturally occurring processes, you know, on the planet
Speaker 3: that maybe shouldn't be messed with, and that once they're
Speaker 3: messed with, then that can trigger a new timeline of
Speaker 3: kind of a dominant effect of negative consequences. So it
Speaker 3: could be that because of the intervention of human beings
Speaker 3: in the first place, is what triggered a lot of
Speaker 3: this really nasty fallout. So that does beg the question,
Speaker 3: like to what this person you quoted ben as saying,
Speaker 3: maybe that would be true if it hadn't have been
Speaker 3: messed with in the first place, But now that it
Speaker 3: has been messed with, it's become a problem that does
Speaker 3: need some level of addressing, or it's just gonna get worse,
Speaker 3: or that part of the country they're just gonna have
Speaker 3: to like pull those over the whole thing and start
Speaker 3: from scratch, you know, fill it in with concrete or something.
Speaker 2: I don't know what would happen. What are the alternatives?
Speaker 1: I mean, it's anybody's game, you know. And look, it
Speaker 1: sounds like we're possibly taking a hit out on the
Speaker 1: good people in the assaulted area. We are absolutely not
Speaker 1: got to tell you, folks, we are not a crew
Speaker 1: of folks who have spent a lot of time in
Speaker 1: the desert. So I think it's fair to say when
Speaker 1: folks like us venture out west, especially to this part
Speaker 1: of California, all that open space kind of puts the
Speaker 1: zap on us. It's like when Max met Montana and
Speaker 1: saw why they call it sky Country.
Speaker 2: It's big.
Speaker 1: This scale is amazing.
Speaker 2: I remember I remember.
Speaker 1: Driving you and the gang out just the Hoover Dam
Speaker 1: and we were all somewhat speechless by the immensity.
Speaker 2: Of the of the area.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think super producer Paul Mission Controlled dechead of
Speaker 3: Stuff that I want you to know, said, it almost
Speaker 3: felt not real, like you were looking at something that
Speaker 3: was created in a video game or something, because of
Speaker 3: the vastness of it and just the epic, you know,
Speaker 3: expanse of it all that we're not used to seeing that.
Speaker 3: You know, U must you live out there. We're not
Speaker 3: used to seeing that in real life. We're its kind
Speaker 3: of used to seeing recreations of it, So it almost
Speaker 3: feels like you're in sort of an immersive virtual reality
Speaker 3: kind of situation, which is pretty weird to say, but
Speaker 3: it's it's true. I was hit the same way by
Speaker 3: it that it had this uncanny valley kind of vibe
Speaker 3: to it.
Speaker 1: And there's a beauty to it, you know, And there's
Speaker 1: a beauty, there's the ambiguity. There are many questions left
Speaker 1: to answer about the Sultan Sea. One thing is for sure.
Speaker 1: The clock is ticking. Perhaps the origin story is ridiculous,
Speaker 1: but it has also inspired a great deal of human ingenuity,
Speaker 1: and we can't wait to see what sort of solutions
Speaker 1: are on the way in the future. We also can't
Speaker 1: thank you enough for tuning in, and thank you to
Speaker 1: our super producer and research associate for today's episode, mister
Speaker 1: Max Williams. Guys, I forget to tell you I sent
Speaker 1: over the holiday, by which I mean.
Speaker 2: Today before we record it.
Speaker 1: I dropped our old pal Jonathan Strickland a quick line,
Speaker 1: asked him if you wanted to be on the show,
Speaker 1: wished him a happy New Year and maybe he will
Speaker 1: deign to return. I have figured out how to tell
Speaker 1: him he's got some competition now with the Puzzler.
Speaker 2: Oh, the Puzzler.
Speaker 3: I really do think we should like pit them against
Speaker 3: one another in a quiz slash puzzle off.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it'll be for the ages.
Speaker 3: But you know, we can't thank you enough for tuning in,
Speaker 3: but we surely will try. And we also like to
Speaker 3: thank everyone else that makes the show possible, of course,
Speaker 3: including Max Williams, super producer slash research associate Alex Williams
Speaker 3: who composed this theme, Chris frostiotis here in spirit, and
Speaker 3: Eves Jeff Coates wandering the wide world of podcasts.
Speaker 1: I'd like to thank Tom Waits sultan Ce feels like
Speaker 1: his vibe. Oh yeah, he was going to go on
Speaker 1: the show with us, but he only accepts payment in
Speaker 1: rusted nineteen fifty seven Chevy parts. It's true, which we
Speaker 1: didn't have handy. But Tom, if you're hearing, we hope
Speaker 1: you enjoyed this one as well.
Speaker 3: I think Tom listens to the show. He only listens
Speaker 3: to stuff on like an old Victrola.
Speaker 1: Right right, and he has to have a busted, busted
Speaker 1: couple tubes that he can scatter around. Just so, please
Speaker 1: tune in later this week we are going to explore
Speaker 1: a complex, strange phenomenon of yesteryear. You may have asked yourselves, folks, Hey,
Speaker 1: why do so many pictures of historical figures in childhood?
Speaker 1: Why do they seem to be wearing dot dot dot dresses.
Speaker 3: And our short pants? What is the little Lord fault Leroy?
Speaker 3: Look the Buster Brown. We'll get to it on the
Speaker 3: next episode of Ridiculous History. We'll see you next time, folks.
Speaker 3: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 3: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.