Imperial (187 page)

2. Delineations (2000)

Epigraph: “Our eyes scan only a small angle . . .”—Ansel Adams, p. 67.

“A step over the ditch, and I was in Mexican territory . . .”—
Imperial Press and Farmer
, vol. II, no. 32 (Saturday, November 22, 1902), p. 4 (“A Chatty Letter,” repr. from the
Santa Ana Herald
).

Hay prices and yields not long after 1907—
USDA Yearbook
(1909), pp. 499-500, 1908-9 figures. The national average yield per acre of hay was 1.42 bushes. The California and Arizona figures were 1.70 and 3.30 bushels, respectively. The
Yearbook
notes (p. 11) that hay was America’s fourth-most-valuable crop, but “considerably below wheat” and “far below cotton.” Corn was the premier crop. Nine decades later, when I was visiting Imperial, hay was easily the most conspicuous of these four moneymakers. An EPA scientist whom I interviewed in 2001 told me that alfalfa was by a wide margin the most water-wasteful of Imperial’s crops, and that it would probably be necessary to put many of the old-style inefficient family hay farms out of business.

Footnote: “The presence of a boundary. . .”—
Bol’shaia Sovetskaia Entsiklopediia
, vol. 13, p. 324 (entry on the finite).

Footnote: The prevalence of the name “Imperial” in the entity I call Imperial—Description after an ICHSPM photograph, uncatalogued as of 1999.

Footnote: Extract from the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo—Castillo, p. 187 (Appendix 2, text of treaty, Article V).

“Our Dutchman insisted that the plain over which we passed . . .”—Pattie, p. 207.

Old newspapers: “A section of Arid America.”—
Imperial Press and Farmer
, vol. II, no. 38 (Imperial, California, Saturday, January 3, 1903), p. 3 (“To Make the Desert Blossom with the Homes of Men”).

“A northwestern extension of the basin in which the Gulf of California lies”—Oakeshott, p. 10.

One-armed Major Powell: “Coahuila Valley, the most desolate region on the continent.”—John Wesley Powell, p. 3.

My floral guide to Baja California: “Vast agricultural areas of the Mexicali Valley . . .”—Roberts, p. 33. “Tamarisk” was capitalized in the original.

“There appears to be a widespread impression . . .”—Ibid., 1909, p. 201 (Scofield).

Phrases from
Barbara Worth
dust jacket—Wright.

“Often as Barbara sat looking over that great basin . . .”—Ibid., p. 62; also, caption to frontispiece.

“The pioneers in Barbara’s Desert . . .”—Ibid., p. 335.

Statistics of the 1910 census—
Thirteenth Census of the United States, Taken in the Year 1910,
vol. 2, pp. 139, 143, 166. In 1910 the population of California was 2,377,549, and the population of Imperial County was 13,591.

The Kentucky boy who finds “much to my surprize and disappointment, not one white person among them” in New Mexico—Pattie, p. 59.

“Prominent among the wide-awake and progressive businessmen of Brawley . . .”—Farr, p. 436 (biography of Walter P. Casey).

“The wholesome, challenging lure of an unmarred womanhood” and “warmly browned”—Wright, p. 57.

“The sea there is vermilion in color . . .”—Gómara, p. 403.

3. The Water of Life (2001)

Death of 7.5 million African perch (tilapia) on one August day in 1999—
Environmental News Service
website: accessed June 2001.

The Salton Sea as “one of the best and liveliest fishing areas on the West Coast”—Laflin,
Salton Sea: California’s Overlooked Treasure
, p. 52.

“Stories of a polluted Salton Sea are greatly exaggerated . . .”—Ibid., p. 57.

“Believing the largely negative articles . . .”—Ibid., p. 60.

“A wonderful sense of what is right . . .”—Loc. cit. The 1910 description of Howe and Hall (p. 175) is also quite bucolic.

The Salton Sea as “a stinking reddish-brown sump . . .”—Dawson and Brechin, p. 167.

Length of the Alamo River (52 miles)—Kreissman, p. 46 (“Rivers and Streams”).

The New River as “the filthiest stream in the nation . . .”—Dawson and Brechin, loc. cit. According to another writer, “the state of California and county officials in the Imperial Valley label the New River, which arises in the United States” [it doesn’t] “and then flows through the sprawling city of Mexicali . . . ‘the dirtiest river in America’” (Ruiz, p. 198).

That confederation of counties and water districts called the Salton Sea Authority—The Authority is, according to its own leaflet, “a joint powers agency formed in 1993 by the Coachella Valley Water District, the Imperial Irrigation District, Riverside County and Imperial County.”

“Myth #5” and all succeeding quotations in this paragraph are from a leaflet entitled “Myths and Realities,” sent to me by the Salton Sea Authority in 2001.

Blue Lake of the New River: “Bordered with mesquit trees, which hang gracefully over its banks . . .”—
Imperial Press and Farmer
, vol. I, no. 1 (Saturday, April 20, 1901), p. 4 (“To Indian Wells via Blue Lake”). Blue Lake was 8 miles from Imperial and 2 miles from Indian Wells.

Length of the New River (60 miles)—Kreissman, p. 46 (“Rivers and Streams”).

Mr. L. M. Holt: “Unmistakeable evidences of water having flowed” from the Colorado River “through innumerable channels . . . ”—
Imperial Press and Farmer
, vol. II, no. 38 (Imperial, California, Saturday, January 3, 1903), p. 3 (“To Make the Desert Blossom with the Homes of Men”).

In fact, we find the name in Bartlett’s old narrative of 1850-53.—Excerpted in
Wonders of the Colorado Desert
, p. 62.

Footnote: “From Fort Yuma, we started again . . .”—Hobbs, pp. 217-18.

Chart of disease rates per 100,000: Environmental Protection Agency website: “Status Report on the Water and Wastewater Infrastructure Project for the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands,” accessed June 2001. The North American Development Bank, the Border Cooperation Commission, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and various other such entities were helping to lead Mexico into a bright new day with a wastewater-treatment facility, a pumping plant, and God knows what else. Nobody I talked to seemed to have much idea about any of it.

Footnote: Dr. F. W. Peterson on typhoid—Farr, p. 218 (F. W. Peterson, “Medical History”).

The effluvium of eight hundred thousand people—This was the most common population estimate I heard while in Mexicali, and it was endorsed by
La Opinión
. An American source says: “The present population of Mexicali is reported as 438,377, but some believe it is much greater—approaching 1 million” (California Regional Water Control Board District 7 website,
http://www.swrcb.ca.gov.rwqcb7/newriver/nr-intro.html
, accessed June 2001).

Footnote: California Environmental Protection Agency report—California Environmental Protection Agency Regional Water Quality Control Board, Colorado River Basin Region, executive officer’s report, January 2001, p. 1 (Phil Gruenberg, “Meeting with Mayor Hermosillo”). Outcome: “The Mayor also indicated he would support a monitoring program of the underground storm drains, but that concurrence would have to be obtained again—from federal authorities.” This seems reasonable enough.

Cerro Prieto: “Thrown up by the mirage into the form of a battleship showing plainly the masts and turrets,” etc.—Tout,
The First Thirty Years
, pp. 60-61 (“Reminiscences of Imperial’s Early Days, by Mrs. W. A. Edgar”).

Geological description of the area around Cerro Prieto, and the route to it—Based in part on Lindsay and Hample, p. 34.

Map: “Northern Part of the Colorado River Delta in Lower California, Compiled by California Development Company, W.H. Holabird, Receiver.”—California State Archives file no. 192 (map case #1, hole #47), cat. 192: C2803-C 2127-1, Box 1 (undated, 2’9” x 4’9”).

Footnote: “A 1910 American history of the Imperial Valley”: Volcano Lake as the source of the Río Nuevo—Howe and Hall, p. 74.

Scientist from the Environmental Protection Agency: “That’s domestic sewage foam . . .”—My informant was Eugenia McNaughton, environmental scientist for the U.S. EPA, Water Division, Region 9, San Francisco office. She happened to be, among other things, a member of the New River Task Force. Her day-to-day work frequently involved her with what she referred to as “lower Colorado River Delta issues.” She called the New River “a very solvable problem. The water, murky and chocolaty though it might be, is domestic wastewater.”

Flow of the New River at the border (200 cubic feet per second)—Regional Water Quality Control Board, Basin Planning Program, New River/Mexicali Project, introduction, p. 1 of 2 (website
http://www.swrcb.ca.gov.rwqcb7/archive/programs/basinplanning/newriver/-hsnr_intro.html
, accessed June 2001). According to
The California Water Atlas
(p. 3), the New River’s average annual inflow at the border was 45,415 acre-feet in 1975.

Regional Water Quality Control Board: “The pollutants of major concern . . .”—California Environmental Protection Agency Regional Water Quality Control Board, Colorado River Basin Region, June 10, 1999, executive officer’s report (Jose Angel, “Request for Information by U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein”); at the web address
http://www.swrcb.ca.gov.rwqcb7/documents/eo_reports/eo-99-06.10.html
, accessed June 2001 (henceforth CEPA, June 10, 1999).

Ninety-five percent of California’s wetlands were already gone—
San Jose Mercury News
, Friday, January 14, 2000, Dara Akiko Williams, AP (“Plan to save Salton Sea: Reducing salinity of the dying lake a priority, official at conference says”).

The sea’s ecoystem was doomed unless nine million tons of salt could be removed every year.—Ibid.

Précis of “The Problems of an Irrigation Farmer”—
USDA Yearbook
(1909), esp. pp. 203-5 (Scofield).

Sabine Huynen, Salton Sea Database Project, University of Redlands—Phone interview, October 2001.

The “Audubon Society fellow” and his claim of “nine million pounds of pesticides a year on Imperial Valley fields.”—Mr. Fred Cagle, telephone interview with author, 2001.

Thoreau: “No face which we can give to a matter . . .”—Henry D. Thoreau,
The Illustrated Walden
, p. 327.

The United States Congressional General Accounting Office “finds that sewage from Mexico poses a health risk to public health”—CEPA, June 10, 1999.

Selenium health advisory (not more than 4 ounces of Salton Sea fish-meat per 2 weeks)—SDSU website, accessed June 2001. Advisory isued by California’s Health Advisory Board.

One journalist’s magnificent words: “A vast salt and selenium bed of dust . . .”—
Western Outdoors
, February 2001, p. 50 (Bill Karr, “Secrets of the Salton Sea”). Like Fred Cagle, Eugenia McNaughton of the EPA thought that this might be exaggerated. But she allowed: “There is speculation about what will happen as the shoreline is exposed.”

California Blue Book
for 1950: “The county is drained by the Whitewater River . . .”—P. 935.

Percentage of Salton Sea inflow not from Mexico (90%)—SDSU website, accessed June 2001.

Area of the Salton Sea (352 square miles)—Kreissman, p. 52 (“Lakes and Reservoirs”).

“Pursuant to Section 303(d) of the U.S. Clean Water Act . . .”—CRWQCB-CRBR 11-12-99 EO’s Report, p. 5 of 9 (“Statutory Requirements”); from the website
http://www.swrcb.ca.gov/rwqcb7/documents/eo_reports/eo-99-11-12.html
. As of January 2000, California was the proud possessor of 509 bodies of water labeled “impaired,” meaning too degraded for recreation (
San Diego Union-Tribune
, Friday, January 14, 2000, Terry Rodgers, “Group plans solution to pollution 509 contaminated water sites prompt statewide suit,” which is one of the most incomprehensible headlines I’ve ever read). In February 2000, the Salton Sea watershed was listed as a Category I (Impaired) Priority.

4. Subdelineations: Lovescapes (2001)

Epigraph: “. . . an intelligent species . . .”—Midgley, p. 121.

Descartes: “ There is nothing in all that I formerly believed . . .”—
Descartes-Spinoza
, p. 76 (
Meditations of the First Philosophy
, trans. Elizabeth S. Haldane and G. R. T. Ross, Meditation I).

Footnote: “Such simple ‘sand maps’ . . .”—Heizer and Elsasser, pp. 8-9.

5. The Widemouthed Pipe (2002)

Epigraph: “We attribute motives . . .”—Laing, p. 27.

Thoreau: “I should not talk so much about myself . . .”—Thoreau,
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
, etc., p. 325
(Walden).

6. Then and Now (844 -2002)

Epigraph: ‘Standing today by the grave of that infant civilization . . .”—Farr, p. iii.

Mr. V. Gant: “My experience this season . . .”—
Imperial Press and Farmer
, vol. II, no. 38 (Imperial, California, Saturday, January 3, 1903), p. 6 (“To Make the Desert Blossom . . .”).

A. W. Patten: “The weather is not uncomfortable . . .”—Ibid., vol. II, no. 15 (Saturday, July 26, 1902), p. 1 (“Big Imperial Crops”).

The Imperial Valley’s per capita electricity consumption—Gottlieb and FitzSimmons, p. 72.

“Some of the finest specimens will be presented to the Chamber of Commerce.”—
Imperial Press and Farmer
, vol. II, no. 42 (Saturday, January 31, 1903), p. 8 (“Imperial Iron Wood $500 a Cord”).

Footnote: “A man who was there . . . : ‘Calexico, which derives its name from a combination of California and Mexico . . .’ ”—Farr, p. 126 (narrative of C. R. Rockwood, 1909).

J. B. Hoffman “invented the open air jail . . .”—Tout,
The First Thirty Years
, p. 79.

William E. Smythe: “Potash, lime, magnesia . . .” and “On the other hand, these elements have been accumulating . . .”—Op. cit., pp. 37-38.

“ . . . it took the Government a half century to wake up . . .”—
Imperial Press and Farmer
, vol. II, no. 38, p. 3 (“To Make the Desert Blossom with the Homes of Men”).