Salton Sea Species Conservation Habitat

California’s largest lake, the Salton Sea, has been shrinking for decades, exposing toxic sediments and endangering wildlife and human health. The Salton Sea Species Conservation Habitat Project addresses this crisis by creating 4,000 acres of restored wetland habitat to combat hypersaline conditions, revive aquatic life, and restore critical bird migration routes.

RMH provided electrical and controls design for the prime consultant Knight Piesold. The electrical design included power, grounding, and lighting for the saline pump station, flood buffer pump station, and O&M building, along with a new utility service, medium-voltage distribution, circuit breaker coordination, arc flash study, and back-up power (UPS) for critical instrumentation. RMH designed a new site-wide control system, integrating pump station controllers and up to 50 process instruments, and provided logic diagrams, motor control center schematics, and site security design for a CCTV system.

Key highlights of the project include a gravity-flow system; mixing channels and sedimentation ponds for optimal water quality control to maintain salinity between 20 g/L and 40 g/L; variable speed pumps and removable diffuser pipes for flexible salinity management; and a design that allows for potential high-intensity rainfall events, minimizing upstream impacts and protecting agricultural land.