[Water_news] 4. DWR'S CALIFORNIA WATER NEWS: WATER QUALITY - 7/2/07

Department of Water Resources

California Water News

A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment

 

July 2, 2007

 

4. Water Quality -

 

 

 

Face it: Sometimes it stinks

By JONATHAN ATHENS, Staff Writer

Imperial Valley Press – 7/1/07

 

The Imperial Valley is often abbreviated as “I.V.,” but some places could be identified by the letters “P.U.”

Thousands of rotting or dried-out fish carcasses ring a portion of the Salton Sea, the stench of warm cattle dung permeating from feedlots hangs heavy in the air in some places in the Valley, and a sulfur-like stink from a sewer grate along a small Brawley side street intensifies when the breeze blows.

There’s no other way to say it but this place really stinks.

Bill and Betty London, who live along the West Shores of the Salton Sea, say the dead fish smell is something they live with.

“It comes and goes. One day you smell it, the next day you don’t,” Bill London said.

 

The Salton Sea is considered an ecological disaster. Years of neglect and rising salinity rates are taking a toll on the state’s largest land-locked body of water. Fish die-offs are common and anyone walking out to the shores, once they get past the claylike muck, finds themselves standing before a long ring of tilapia carcasses. Look closer to the water’s edge and one can see the most recent kills.

The fish odor, Betty London said, reminds her of the time past when she worked and lived in New Jersey’s bay area.

“But you just get used to it,” she said.

Bill London said he doesn’t believe anything will change even though California lawmakers are considering an $8.9 billion restoration and revitalization plan for the Salton Sea.

Although the dead fish smell abates when the wind dies down and there are enough volunteers to clean up the fresh carcasses, there is no relenting from the stink coming from cattle feedlots. The stench of cattle dung is so pervasive and powerful that one can literally smell it before seeing it.

Ask Calipatria resident Rosie Flores and she’ll tell you that heavy odor is “the smell of money” that comes from the cattle industry.

Flores is business manager at the Superior Cattle Feeders in Calipatria.

The constant odor is so strong that it permeates and settles into the vehicle she drives to work at the feedlot.

“When you park your vehicle out there, eventually your vehicle ends up getting the same smell,” she said.

At her desk in an air conditioned office on the second floor of the company’s offices, Flores has candles that she lights from time to time to cut the smell.

She pulled from her desk drawer a spray can of creamy nutmeg fragrance, another tool in her arsenal against the all-pervasive odor of cattle droppings.

Though she says those who work closely with cattle on a daily basis become accustomed to the smell of dung, it never fades from the olfactory senses, Flores said.

The sulphur-like pungent stink coming from a sewer grate in Brawley is not something Monica Munoz is getting used to.

“It’s bad,” Munoz said. “It bothers me. It’s nasty.”

The sewer odors are at times so strong they will sometimes seep into her small house several feet from the grate.

Munoz, who has lived there one year, said her neighbors had complained about the odors and eventually moved out.

There is little chance the Valley will ever earn the dubious distinction of being the stink spot of the Golden State because, as one local air quality expert put it, “everything smells.”

“There are good odors too,” said Steve Birdsall, Imperial County Air Pollution Control Officer.

Each person’s sense of smell and what they deem offensive varies from person to person, he said.

“Some people smell things and others don’t,” he said.

“Spring is when I look forward to the sweet smells of flowers and blooming plants.”#

http://www.ivpressonline.com/articles/2007/07/02/news/news01.txt