Mexico

Our reporting trip to the Salton Sea is over, and we're headed back over the mountains to LA catch a plane. I'd love to stay a few more days, because it's turning out that the Salton Sea is a man-bites-dog story in another sense from the one I cited yesterday.

Here's why: After years of hearing about how the agriculture that surrounds this key stop on the Pacific Flyway is harming the sea, it now turns out that ag and the Sea's defenders are making common cause.

That's because what the farmers need is water. And what the Sea needs is water. And they're both going to lose it.

As part of a massive reordering of the way water is used in Southern California, something like 2oo,000 acre-feet of water a year -- that's roughly 100,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools -- will be withdrawn from use by farmers whose Imperial Valley fields surround the Sea.

Now, you need to understand that water flows into the sea, but not out. Something like six feet of water evaporates every year. And why is it a "sea" if it's inland? Because the Colorado River water that's diverted into the farm fields around here carries with it a small amount of salt, along with pesticides, fertilizer and selenium. Over the years, water dumped on the farm fields flowed eventually into the sea, carrying its light load of salt. But as the water evaporated, it left behind a larger and larger load of salt. (Update/clarification 9/12/09: I realize in re-reading this that it might not be clear that a lot of the salt ending up in the sea is actually leached from the farm fields immediately surrounding it. I guess I also should have mentioned that the Salton Sea already is saltier than seawater.)

So long as water continues to flow into the sea, and continues to evaporate, the water gets saltier and saltier.

The dwindling presence of National Guard troops along the U.S., Mexico border is making it more difficult to monitor crime and drug smuggling, according to television report on KOAT in New Mexico. The Guard's budget has been cut every year for the past decade, slashing staff from 250 to less than 50. This report shows some of the issues border agents deal with, including the ever more clever tricks drug smugglers have devised to hide their goods, and what dehydration and sunburn can do to families trying to cross the border at remote locations.