SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- Despite a multibillion-dollar state budget shortfall, California lawmakers need to get moving on the costly job of fixing the Salton Sea, the Legislature's nonpartisan fiscal analyst said in a report this week.Lawmakers should approve a restoration plan for the ailing desert lake, which straddles Riverside, Imperial and several other Southern California counties, as well as set priorities for paying for the work, the report recommends.Reductions in its water supply will make the sea too salty for any fish by 2015, experts predict, as well as expose acres of sediment that will worsen the region's air pollution.Last May, state officials unveiled an $8.9 billion, 75-year restoration plan. It includes a 52-mile, horseshoe-shaped barrier to create a marine sea along the eastern and western shores.To date, though, the Legislature has taken no action on the plan. A bill to begin the process by releasing $47 million in water bond money was held in the Assembly last year after officials raised concerns that the spending would commit the state to far greater costs in the future.California, meanwhile, confronts an estimated $14.5 billion budget shortfall over the next 18 months. Gov. Schwarzenegger's budget proposal includes significant spending reductions, including the closure of the Salton Sea State Recreation Area.Yet there is no way for the state to avoid the project, Thursday's report said. State law, as well as the 2003 agreement that reduced Colorado River water to Southern California, obligates the state to fix the sea.Significant amounts of federal and local money are unlikely, leaving the state general fund as the main source of money for the work. What money the state has should be targeted at projects that reduce air pollution, protect wildlife, and help the economy."It doesn't make any sense to start building the preferred alternative if the state runs out of money and you have a barrier that goes only halfway across the sea," fiscal and policy analyst Brendan McCarthy, the report's author, said.(Contact Jim Miller at Jmiller@pe.com.)(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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