Throughout much of the year Interstate 10 is traveled heavily by vacationers and weekenders going to the Colorado River for various water activities.

Would we like to see that extensive economic activity at the river transferred to this area? With a little imagination and some venture capital to get things started, it could be done. That is what happened years ago in Las Vegas. The perfect location for this activity would be the Salton Sea.

Consider a scenario in which the sea is fully restored and the Torres-Martinez Band of Cahuilla Indians undertakes the construction of a combination hotel, casino and marina on the Salton Sea waterfront. Such a move could begin a vibrant resurgence of development at the sea and the surrounding area including the Coachella Valley.

The marina should cater to all kinds of boat owners with boat slips for small sailboats and motorboats, a launching area, a cleaning area, and a place for seasonal storage.

To bring about success for such a venture, qualified promotion agents should prepare a long range promotion plan; all involved should apply whatever effort is necessary to carry out that plan.

All of this would bring people to this area instead of to the river. Residential construction would follow along with the usual commercial opportunities, as well as the attendant property tax and sales tax revenue. Employment possibilities would be extensive.

This is just one scenario that could occur. However, such a scenario could not be accomplished at all if the state were to implement its current “preferred alternative.“

That plan attempts to “restore” only 20 percent of the sea and leaves the rest to become a dust bowl requiring up to $140 million annually for dust mitigation, an expense that goes on forever. That plan destroys the sea in a way that makes any future attempt at recovery impossible.

To carry out the scenario proposed above the sea must first be restored at its present shoreline. If we annually desalinate 350,000 acre-feet of Salton Sea water at a facility with adequate capacity, and then replace that desalinated Salton Sea water with an equal quantity of water from the Gulf of California by way of a concrete-lined open waterway using gravity as the driving force, with the entire system operating continuously, we could accomplish several goals at the same time with the same money. We would have restored the sea with lower salinity water without changing the shoreline and with no adverse environmental impact; the incoming water would have generated electricity as it falls more than 220 feet to the level of the sea. We would be able to provide regional water self-sufficiency for the foreseeable future with a never-ending supply of desalinated water available for use by the newly developing community around the sea as well as for the Coachella and Imperial valleys, and we would have created a large sea-level salt water lake at Mexico's Laguna Salada for economic development there.

These goals could all be achieved for $6.5 billion, a cost that could be reduced to $2 billion if Imperial Irrigation District and Coachella Valley Water District could be persuaded to build the desalination facility and the hydropower plant in return for the rights, in perpetuity, to the distribution and sale of the desalinated water and the generated power, well below the $8.9 billion for the “preferred alternative.“

Richard Speed is a Palm Springs resident. Reach him at richardbspeed@gmail.com.