Chris Metlzer - Plagues and Pleasures on the Salton Sea
The Salton Sea is a man-made body of water created in 1901 after developers diverted water from the Colorado River and created a prosperous farming community in the Imperial Valley. Silt created by run-off from the farms blocked water entries to the canals, so engineers made cuts to allow the water to flow through, which caused flooding in the valley. Because of the silt, the Salton Sea was a salt water body that did not evaporate. In the 1950s, it was stocked with water in an effort to turn it into a beach resort with fishing opportunities and a high-priced retirement community, but tragedy kept striking — floods returned, followed by two tropical storms, decimating the property, while an over-abundence of algae have caused massive fish die-offs and the 1990s saw thousands of birds die in a plague of avian botulism.
Christopher Metzler co-directed “Plagues and Pleasures on the Salton Sea” with Jeff Springer as a way of exploring the community and telling a story that he felt had fallen way off other people’s radar. The sea itself has a 100-year history in California — the simple story is that the Salton Sea is a failed resort town that could’ve been Las Vegas if not for some ecological problems. If was championed by Sonny Bono prior to his death, and discussion about saving it continued.
It’s a huge body of water and yet Metzler only ever discovered the place by accident.
JM: How did you first become aware of the Salton Sea?
CM: I grew up in the midwest, so my knowledge of the Salton Sea didn’t start until more recently — in fact, I think that’s one of the things that threw me into the project, because I was on a road trip one time through Southern California and made a few wrong turns and ended up at the Salton Sea. Given how weird the place, the idea of water in the desert, especially such a huge body of water, it took be aback, then I fell in love with the place. The Salton Sea was this old failed resort town that I had come upon in the late ‘90s and after Sonny Bono died, there was all this discussion about saving the Salton Sea and that was the impetus for going and telling the Salton Sea stories. We thought that anything could happen, it could be this tremendous success along the lines of Las Vegas or it could be just be this big boondoggle and either one could be an interesting story. So it was all accidental and a lot of things in the documentary are completely serendipitous.
