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Une "mer" toxique à Coachella ?!

While Coachella festival in the Californian desert presents an image of glamour, a severe environmental and health crisis is unfolding just tens of kilometers away. Videos circulating after each festival edition highlight health issues, particularly respiratory problems, which are significantly above the state average in areas less than 30 km from the festival grounds. These issues disproportionately affect Latino and indigenous communities, including many children, and are concentrated around the Salton Sea, California's largest lake. The Salton Sea, a landlocked body of water without sufficient natural river input, emerged suddenly in the early 1900s due to a massive infrastructure project. Entrepreneur Charles Rockwood envisioned transforming the desert-like Imperial Valley into an agricultural paradise by constructing a large irrigation canal from the Colorado River. Initial efforts in 1901 proved insufficient. In 1904, Rockwood ordered a new, wider trench to be dug. During significant Colorado River floods, a dike broke, and immense quantities of water flowed into a dry basin, the Salton Basin, forming the Salton Sea. This event was deemed a severe and criminal error. Nearly 400 members of the indigenous Cahuilla people, who had inhabited the region for centuries, were forced to flee, losing almost half of their land reserves. It took engineers two years, until 1907, to stop the water flow, by which time the desert had been replaced by a vast lake, the third largest in the United States, roughly five times the size of Marseille.