California’s Palm Springs is a tourist town well-known for its opulent private residences. For a very long time, Palm Springs was regarded as the standard for an elegant, well-planned, and multicultural city in the US and abroad. Another American community that was once named the future Palm Springs has a small population these days due to the poisonous air and pervasive scent of dead fish.
The Imperial County Salton Sea, once a popular tourist attraction, is now beset by dangerous algal blooms, poor air quality, and an unrelenting barrage of dust. The amount of brown-beige dust in the Southern California area has become so bad that people often wake up in the middle of the night with purple skin and breathing difficulties.
According to reports, decades of drought brought on by climate change and increasing temperatures are causing the Salton Sea to decrease. Every year, the area of freshly exposed coastline that is contaminated with arsenic seeps into the atmosphere, killing fish and making people sick. Children with asthma who live close to the water have some of the highest hospitalization rates in the state. One in five children had this illness, which is double the norm.
Mexican American agricultural laborers and outdoor laborers make up a significant section of the population in Imperial County; they live in one of the most economically deprived areas in California. Every day, these people are exposed to a dangerous mixture of insecticides and dust from the Salton Sea. Adult asthma rates in lakefront communities like Calipatria, Brawley, and Westmorland are among the highest in the state.
The Colorado River broke through an irrigation canal in 1905, filling an old desert basin before the Salton Sea appeared. This incident turned the area into a refuge for shorebirds that migrate, and by the middle of the 20th century, it was also a popular destination for dignitaries and celebrities. Developers planted palm trees along the coastlines and built opulent resorts around them, drawing celebrities like Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, and the Beach Boys to visit. All of the animals in and around the lake were soon destroyed by toxic runoff from nearby farms and rising salinity, and the environment now mostly resembles a post-apocalyptic world.