Our last full day on our Imperial Valley trip was spent traveling around the Salton Sea.
Our day started on the west side of the Salton Sea. This is the beach at Salton City.
Salton City was a planned resort city in the 1950s that never really got off the ground. Billed as a sort of Palm Springs for the regular guy, plenty of lots were sold but few were ever built. Evidence of the grand plan is all over the place, with streets named and paved but little else.The sign at the dock looked freshly painted, but it was deserted. Of the many times I have been to the Salton Sea, I have never, ever seen a boat out on it.On the south end of the sea, we passed a field of broccoli being harvested. Broccoli is a cool-season plant, so thie field will be replanted with something more heat tolerant next.We also saw cantaloupe fields being planted. Cantaloupe is recognizable because growers use a lot of plastic in the field to take advantage of solar warming to produce the earliest fruit.Geothermal plants are all over the place here. Since the stacks are emitting only steam and the environmental impacts are low, geothermal power production exists next to agricultural fields as well as wildlife. This picture is taken from the Sonny Bono Bird Refuge.Another shot of the bird refuge ... I like the birds in formation with the geothermal plant in the background...These next pictures are from the shoreline of the Salton Sea at the Sony Bono Wildlife Refuge.
Over on the east side of the sea, we stopped at the always-entertaining mud volcanoes. My kids have been here three times already and still the mud volcanoes never fail to entertain.
This is the view looking opposite the mud volcanoes.This is the Alamo River, close to where it enters the Salton Sea.And this is the New River. Since crossing the border (see the most polluted river post) it has been substantially diluted by drainage water and been exposed to natural processes so that the water is not so bad here. There is no bad smell, and it looks about the same as the Alamo River.These last pictures are of the sunset at the Salton Sea.
There are criticisms of geothermal energy tapping which prevent its being implemented on the large scale which it should be. Critics say that study and research to find a resourceful area is too costly and takes up too much time. Then there is more great expense needed to build a geothermal power plant, and there is no promise of the plant turning a profit. Some geothermal sites, once tapped, might be found to not produce a large enough amount of steam for the power plant to be viable or reliable. And we hear from the environmentalists who worry that bringing up magma can bring up potentially harmful materials along with it.'”
There are criticisms of geothermal energy tapping which prevent its being implemented on the large scale which it should be. Critics say that study and research to find a resourceful area is too costly and takes up too much time. Then there is more great expense needed to build a geothermal power plant, and there is no promise of the plant turning a profit. Some geothermal sites, once tapped, might be found to not produce a large enough amount of steam for the power plant to be viable or reliable. And we hear from the environmentalists who worry that bringing up magma can bring up potentially harmful materials along with it.'”