TPO Writing - پنجاه و چهار

TPO Writing - Fifty Four

Now listen to part of a lecture on the topic you just read about.

It would be great if we could stop the lake salt level from increasing and save its fish and bird populations. But the solutions you just read about aren’t realistic or practical.

First, sure, taking salt out of the lake by desalination would reduce salinity, but it would present some serious problems as well. For example, as you’ve read, water pumped into desalination facilities evaporates and leaves behind solid materials that would dissolve in the water. Well, the solid materials that desalination facilities leave behind would pose a health risk. The materials will be mostly salt, but they would also include other types of chemicals. Some of the chemicals would be toxic, like selenium. If the wind spread selenium and other chemicals into the air and people breathe them in, that would be very dangerous to people’s health.

Second, the idea of bringing ocean water into the lake, again, this would reduce salinity. But as you’ve read, it would require constructing pipelines or canals. The problem is that the local government may not have enough resources to pay for such major construction. The nearest shoreline of the Pacific Ocean is 100 kilometers away. Pipelines and canals are very expensive to build over such long distances.

As for the third solution, dividing the lake into sections by building a system of walls. Well, that’s unlikely to work for very long. That’s because the Salton Seas is located in a region that experiences frequent and sometimes intense geological activity, like earthquakes. That activity would almost certainly destroy the walls separating the different sections. So while this solution might work for a short while, the walls would likely collapse the first time there is a major earthquake. And water from the special sections with high salinity would mix back in with the low-salinity salinity from the main section.