Standing atop a rocky outcrop on the southeastern edge of the Salton Sea in southern California, Bruce Wilcox pointed to the wooden ruins of a boat dock that dates back to the 1960s, when the region was a marina that attracted sport fishermen and celebrities. On a sunny day last December, the dock sat hundreds of feet from the water, rendered obsolete by the shoreline's steady withdrawal. No boats were visible anywhere on the shimmering blue water.

"The marina's been dry for the last five or six years," said Wilcox, 60, the environmental manager for the Imperial Irrigation District (IID), which manages water and energy in California's Imperial Valley and has energy customers in the Eastern Coachella Valley.

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