Travel Photography > Desert Southwest > Slab City

The Los Angeles Times told Southern California how Leonard Knight's little salvation mountain needs to go, but why the silence on the river from hell that flows into Los Angeles' own backyard?

For all the devastation, the Salton Sea area can also be beautiful.

The next day I spend in the wildlife refuges along the coast. I see a white-faced ibis, a long-billed curlew, a snowy egret, an American avocet. 380 species of bird have been seen on the Salton Sea. That’s half of North America’s total species count.

Like how Leonard tested his mountain, everybody has tested the waters of the Salton Sea. The tests keep coming up negative for all the indicators of a polluted lake, the tests come up negative for the New River.

Environmentalists have clues, as if you need one, but not enough hard evidence of anything to get the vast local, state and federal bureaucracies to move beyond a crawl. Selenium levels in animals are rising, and as one animal feeds off another, the cycle of increasing selenium gets fueled even more.

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