(From left to right) Reclamation Commissioner Camille Touton, Congressman Raul Ruiz, Senator Alex Padilla, California Natural Resources Agency Secretary Wade Crowfoot, Assemblyman Eduardo Garcia, and Colorado River Board of California Chair JB Hamby, who also is vice president of the Imperial Irrigation District Board of Directors, all join to break ground on an expansion of the state’s Species Conservation Habitat project at the Salton Sea during a ceremony held Oct. 15 in the Imperial Valley.

On a warm October mid-morning in the Imperial Valley, leaders from several Southern California water agencies, tribes, environmental organizations, and state and federal agencies, along with congressional and legislative representatives, gathered at the southeast corner of the Salton Sea. They were at the site of the state’s largest restoration project for a groundbreaking that will make the project even larger. The ceremony was a celebration of not just a critical expansion to a

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An image of the 2024 Crop Report Plus cover from the Imperial County Agricultural Commissioner’s Office. The Crop Report Plus study examines agriculture’s overall contributions to the Imperial County economy.

Recently, the Imperial County Agricultural Commissioner’s Office (ICACO) released its 2024 Crop Report Plus document, which measures the impact—direct, indirect and induced (all terms pertinent to the report)—that agriculture has on the county’s economy. The Crop Report Plus is produced about every three years and is in addition to the county’s annual Agricultural Crop and Livestock Report. In short, the Crop Report Plus takes a deeper dive into agriculture’s broader contribution to the local economy, going beyond crop production values and employment numbers (direct) by also exploring local inter-industry, business-to-business supplier purchases (indirect), and local consumption spending by employees (induced). This is the third in a series of Crop Report Plus documents released—the first two were released in

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An image of a vegetation enhancement project at the Salton Sea led by the Quantification Settlement Agreement Joint Powers Authority (QSA JPA) of which the San Diego County Water Authority is a partnering agency with the Imperial Irrigation District (IID), the Coachella Valley Water District, and the state. The work of the QSA JPA is separate but complementary to the state’s restoration efforts led by the California Natural Resources Agency. Photo courtesy of IID.

In the ongoing saga that is the Colorado River, the Salton Sea has certainly found its place as an important piece of the river’s story. The sea, an approximately 365-square mile inland lake, crosses two counties, Imperial and Riverside, is home to small communities in both counties (Salton City, Bombay Beach, Desert Shores and Mecca), and to an important California tribe, the Torres Martinez Desert Cahuilla. The Salton Sea basin has been filled over

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