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<br />001577 <br /> <br />2002] <br /> <br />THE lAST GREEN lAGOON <br /> <br />933 <br /> <br />decreasing in recent years.190 Without adequate federal funding, <br />violations of the EPA standards are imminent, and u.s. treaty <br />compliance is jeopardized. In fact, according to a 1996 CRBSCF <br />report, salinity concentrations were already in violation of EPA <br />standards, a situation only avoided in 1997 due to unusually <br />high flows. 191 <br /> <br />D. Efforts to Save the Salton Sea <br /> <br />Restoration efforts in the Salton Sea, California's largest <br />inland body of water, represent another potential claim to the <br />water of the Colorado. Located in California's Imperial Valley <br />approximately 90 miles east of San Diego, the Sea lies in a <br />natural bowl that has filled with water from time to time over the <br />past few million years.192 The Sea owes its current existence to a <br />twentieth century engineering catastrophe.193 In the early 1900's, <br />Anglo speculators dug a large diversion canal from the Colorado <br />River (near Yuma), passing through Mexico to the newly-named <br />town of Imperial, California;l94 By 1904, Imperial Valley had <br />7,000 settlers who irrigated fannland with Colorado River <br />water.195 Nevertheless, the poorly constructed main canal soon <br />clogged with sediment. To bypass the clog, the Colorado <br />Development Company cut a new canal in the river's banks, but <br />failed to install a control gate.196 The next spring, heavy <br />snowmelt from the Rocky Mountains produced severe flooding <br />along the Gila and the Lower Colorado Rivers, and the river <br />broke through the primitive canal banks. By summer, the entire <br />flow of the Colorado River had moved from its natural channel <br />into the new canal and was flowirtg into the Imperial Valley, <br />rapidly flooding more than a quarter of a million acres of <br />fannland.197 A massive one and a half year effort eventually <br />pushed the river back into its natural channel, but the gigantic <br />inland sea created by the flood remained and continued to grow, <br />fed by irrigation outflows from the Imperial, Coachella, and <br /> <br />190. See PONTIUS, supra note 3, at 65. <br />191. See PONTIUS, supra note 3, at 66; Newcom, supra note 178, at 7. <br />192. See MICHAEL J. COHEN ET AL., HAVEN OR HAzARD: THE ECOLOGY AND FuTuRE OF <br />THE SALTON SEA 1 (1999). <br />193. See iii. at 6-7. <br />194. See WORSTER, supra note 174, at 194-212. <br />195. See id at 196. <br />196. Id at 196-197. <br />197. Id; see also COHEN ET AL.. supra note 192, at 6. <br />