Progress Overview
The Salton Sea Management Program’s 10-year Plan calls for construction of habitat restoration and dust suppression on 29,800 acres of exposed lakebed and areas that will be exposed by 2028. This Progress Dashboard provides a snapshot of the accomplishments and advancements being made towards this goal and towards improving conditions at the Salton Sea.
The Salton Sea Management Program and partners conduct a variety of activities to support the goals of the Phase 1: 10-Year Plan. These activities range from temporary measures at the onset of a project, such as surface roughening, to permanent construction features. SSMP tracks the outcomes of these activities to help measure progress toward 10-Year Plan goals.
The SSMP team tracks the unique count of acres of dust suppression and fish and wildlife habitat construction per project in order to track the program's progress toward achieving habitat restoration and dust suppression on 29,800 acres of exposed lakebed by 2028. In this dashboard, project area with interim dust suppression is reported with total completed acres (dark blue). However, project areas with interim dust suppression acres may also undergo additional construction.
In addition, the program is tracking other metrics such as public amenities and recreation access and acres of endangered and special status species habitat. The metrics for endangered species and special status species habitat are not unique acres and can overlap with dust suppression or fish and wildlife habitat acres.
2,568 acres
396 acres
1,230 acres
167 acres
3,933 acres
3,110 acres
Dust Suppression
Dust suppression activities can include water-less measures such as surface roughening and placing grass bales on the exposed lakebed. These techniques reduce wind speed and therefore airborne particles.
Surface roughening and placing grass bales are interim measures that can be done as discrete treatments or in conjunction with other measures such as vegetation enhancement activities. SSMP reports both acres that have been treated for interim dust suppression as well as acres where vegetation enhancement activities of planting/seeding and irrigating are complete.
The first dust suppression projects were implemented in 2020 and dust suppression activities continue to be used to meet the goals in the SSMP Phase 1: 10-Year Plan.
| Bruchard Road | 112 acres | |
| Clubhouse Vegetation Enhancement | 397 acres * | |
| New River East | 341 acres | |
| New River West | 302 acres | |
| Species Conservation Habitat (SCH) | 500 acres | |
| Tule Wash Vegetation Enhancement | 915 acres * | |
| West Bombay Beach Vegetation Enhancement | 93 acres |
* Denotes projects where acreage was previously reported as interim dust suppression and those acres were converted to vegetation enhancement completed or to fish and wildlife habitat. For Clubhouse, 25 acres of interim dust suppression reported in 2022 were converted to completed in 2023.
Fish & Wildlife Habitat
Fish and wildlife habitat can include aquatic ponds and wetland habitats. The SSMP Phase 1: 10-Year Plan is required to implement 14,800 acres of fish and wildlife habitat, 50 percent of the 29,800 milestone.
Fish and Wildlife Habitat includes habitat for a broad range of species, both common and special status. Therefore, if a project is implemented to create habitat for a specific species it could also be identified in the Endangered Species and Special Status Category.
| Species Conservation Habitat (SCH) | 167 acres |