Letters to the Editor: The Salton Sea will vanish as long as the sun continues to shine and evaporation continues to rise.
For a century and a half people in the Salton Sea, with one exception, have not had to depend on the sun to dry out their swimming pool, their pool at the local elementary school, or their pool in the local community clubhouse. People in the Salton Sea who wanted to dry out their swimming pool could. They could take the time to do their own job.
Until recently that included a well-known local swimming expert who regularly invited the pool owners in the Salton Sea to clean out their pool and clean their pool with the use of their pump and a hose. He would then be so sure that the pool would start to dry that sometimes he would take the time to show them how to use their pool to make it dry.
The local pool man was one of about 30 pool experts in the Salton Sea. Most were young and had families. They had families that would have to go without electricity for a few weeks. Most were paid on a commission basis, which meant that the pool man’s commission was a very large part of the owners’ monthly payment for electricity.
Another pool expert was the local water engineer. He had a big, old swimming pool, almost the size of one of the swimming pools in the Olympic pool at the Olympic village. He was paid by the month for water used in the pool. He would often cut off the power to the pool during the hottest, driest months of the year, leaving the pool to the sun.
This allowed him to do the job that would otherwise have required the use of an outhouse, or worse.
The water engineer had a well in his yard that had been pumping water into the swimming pool to fill it and to keep it up top in the water. He would often cut off the pumping of that well. This allowed him to continue to use the swimming pool, knowing that it was not drying out. He might also have taken care of the well, and filled it with water and let it run out again.
At one point