On a baseball diamond about five miles from the southeastern shores of California’s Salton Sea, 12-year-old Christopher Leon steps up to the plate. Christopher plays for the Calipatria Braves, and tonight he’s the lead-off hitter in the game against the Calipatria Dodgers.
Mark Saiza,11, is on the pitcher’s mound for the Dodgers, and his brother Brayden Saiza, 10, crouches low, catching. Christopher’s bat connects with one of Mark’s pitches and he sprints to first base. As the game kicks off, the pitcher, the catcher and the first batter all compete despite having respiratory challenges.
It’s a balmy spring evening in mid-April in Calipatria — population 6,012 — and, thankfully for these young athletes, there’s little wind. The nearby Salton Sea, a land-locked, saline lake, is drying, and gusty winds whip up toxic dust and particulate pollution from the exposed lakebed. One in five elementary school kids living within 20 miles of the sea has asthma, health studies have found, and local kids who are exposed to dust storms experience reduced lung function and more wheezing and bronchitic symptoms.
Among the Calipatria Little League athletes, asthma and allergies are common. Brothers Mark and Brayden know their mother, cheering from the bleachers, always has their inhalers in case either boy’s asthma flares. Christopher, who would go on to score the first run of the game, admits that his dust and pollen allergies can become distracting on blustery game days.
“I just mess with my nose,” Christopher said after the game, “and I rub my eyes because they itch a lot.”
Some communities rally around youth football; in the springtime in this rural corner of California, in the desert some two hours east of San Diego, Little League is the talk of the town. But families watching the game said they must face the fact that the sport their kids love also exposes them to extreme heat and air pollution — a potent blend of particulates, pesticides and allergens that harm their lungs.
Located in the northern end of Imperial County, Calipatria is one of the communities closest to the so-called Lithium Valley, where an underground reservoir of geothermal brine beneath the Salton Sea contains one of the world’s largest lithium deposits. It’s at the center of plans, long touted by businesses and politicians as high up as Gov. Gavin Newsom, to transform California’s neglected, polluted and job-poor Imperial Valley into a hub for green industry. Imperial County has ambitious plans to develop 51,000 acres of land along the sea for renewable energy, lithium extraction and associated infrastructure. But some are concerned that the county’s plans, including its proposal to fast-track a wide range of industrial projects, could further exacerbate the region’s public health crisis.
There is a severe shortage of pediatric respiratory specialists in the Imperial Valley, so families dealing with pollution-related health problems have to travel long distances and sometimes across the border to Mexico for care.
Already, families monitor the weather, rescheduling practices and cancelling games when high winds whip up clouds of dust. Just a few kids missing practice due to flaring asthma and allergies means a whole team can’t run through gameday scenarios. Braves coach Pete Spence said that he recommends that athletes with asthma — he guessed there were four on his team — always keep their inhaler with their gameday equipment.
“Mother Nature is Mother Nature,” Spence said, “and our environment is our environment, so we have to cope with it.”
Frances Ruiz, Christopher’s mother and the Braves’ volunteer team mom, is in charge of coordinating snacks and informing families when practices have been rescheduled due to wind.
She grew up in the region and considers herself a “barometer”; when her throat itches and eyes water, she knows her kids will also suffer allergy symptoms. She has learned to spot the signs of respiratory distress in the athletes, like when kids are rounding the bases and struggling to breathe. In those situations, she said, coaches pull the kids from the game, send them to wash the dust off their faces and do breathing exercises.
“Everybody keeps an eye out for everybody,” she said, “because we’re already familiar with our kids and their symptoms.”
This evening, the Braves and Dodgers are squaring off at Garrett Field. A truck parked along the street hawks shaved ice. Before the game, the athletes dab paint on their faces, adding eye black, as well as crosses to their cheeks and mustaches above their bare lips. With a multigenerational crowd packing the metal bleachers, the game might be the hottest ticket in this small town.
Some 10 minutes northeast of the ballfield is Calipatria State Prison, which housed 2,548 people as of July 22 — more than 40% of the city population — and employed just under 1,100 people full-time as of June. Besides the prison, the 3.7-square-mile town feels like an island in a sea of agriculture.
Sunny Imperial County grows the vast majority of the country’s leafy greens during the winter, and alfalfa, broccoli and onions are among the crops growing in the fields nearby. Along with the Salton Sea dust, residents point to the agricultural industry and massive cattle feedlots nearby as triggers of allergies and asthma.
Calipatria Mayor Michael Luellen also attributes residents’ respiratory health challenges to dust storms that occur every few months or so and whip up dirt from the city’s 200-acre airport.
When the dust storms hit, he said, “You can’t see, you can’t breathe.”
The town tries to mitigate the dust exposure, he said, and is allocating money to pave dirt roads and plant hundreds of trees throughout the city. City officials are also in the process of developing a park on the airport site, according to city manager Laura Gutierrez.
But, “When you’re surrounded by fields,” Luellen said, “there’s not really much you can do.”
Luellen acknowledges that asthma is a fact of life in this region. The sixth-generation Imperial Valley resident said he’s been hospitalized three times due to asthma. His deceased parents both had the condition, he said, and his grandparents do too.
“Basically everyone has it. Some of the people are fortunate to outgrow it when they get older,” he said. “But for a good amount of people, if you have it when you’re young, you’re stuck with it the rest of your life.”
In Calipat, as locals call it, Highway 111 intersects with Main Street, where a new grocery store opened in December, across from a new Circle K gas station. Nearby, a new doughnut shop that opened in February also sells breakfast burritos and menudo on weekends.
Beyond Main Street, residents live in modest, single-family homes on wide streets with few trees. The median household income here — about $53,000 — is about half that of California. Throughout the residential area are more than 200 vacant lots, eyesores that city manager Gutierrez attributes to out-of-town buyers snatching up property ahead of a potential lithium boom.
City officials are focusing on building housing and updating the aging sewer system and other infrastructure, Gutierrez said, because “if lithium comes, we want to be ready.”
The county, in a draft environmental report, estimates Lithium Valley will deliver 40,000 much-needed jobs, including 10,000 construction jobs, to Imperial County, where the unemployment rate reported in June — a preliminary figure of 17.6% — was among the highest in California.
Advocates question the county’s job-creation estimate, pointing out in public comments that some industries greenlit for Lithium Valley — including data centers, anaerobic digesters and green hydrogen facilities — require few full-time employees to operate. Others in the community are skeptical that the development will provide high-quality jobs with competitive wages, benefits and opportunities for advancement that would meaningfully improve residents’ lives.
Environmental justice organizations, meanwhile, contend that the plan fails to acknowledge the region’s existing environmental challenges and high asthma rates. In public comments, some residents urged county supervisors not to prioritize job creation over residents’ health.
“Treating this solely as an economic development opportunity while disregarding potential environmental and public health consequences would be irresponsible,” El Centro resident Joey Espinoza, lead organizer for the public health programs at Imperial Valley Equity & Justice, said in written comments on the county’s plan submitted last spring.
The health care system in the region is already strained. Pediatrician Dr. Lwbba Chait treats kids with mild asthma symptoms at Pioneers Memorial Hospital in Brawley, and refers patients with more severe asthma to pediatric pulmonologists in San Diego.
But commuting for care can be challenging. In Imperial County, where about 70% of children are enrolled in Medi-Cal, California’s Medicaid program, some families have limited transportation, Chait said, and others are unable to pass interior Border Patrol checkpoints due to their immigration status. Other families see specialists across the border in Mexicali, a metropolis of about 1.2 million people whose population dwarfs that of all of Imperial County.
To help fill this gap, a team of community health workers visit families at home, ensuring they know how to use their inhalers, teaching them which cleaning products trigger asthma and bringing them HEPA vacuums and hypoallergenic pillow cases. The Respira Sano program, which draws resources from the California Environmental Protection Agency, has 230 registered families and 50 on the wait list, according to Esther Bejarano, director of health programs at the Brawley nonprofit Comité Civico del Valle.
“This is a very common chronic illness, but you can die from it,” said Bejarano, who has two sons with asthma. “If you can’t breathe, nothing matters.”
By the third inning, the Dodgers lead the Braves. Lorenzo Felix, the Braves’ 12-year-old shortstop, hits a single. What the fans in the bleachers may not have known is that before the game, he had needed to take his inhaler because, he recalled, “I couldn’t breathe.”
Lorenzo was first hospitalized for asthma at age 5, his mother, Betzy Felix, said. For years after that, he would grow quiet and lie down when his asthma flared. She would put a pulse oximeter on his finger and clock his blood oxygen levels dropping, sending them rushing to Pioneers, about 20 minutes away.
Over the years, Felix has learned to help Lorenzo control his asthma and allergies. He sees a specialist in San Diego. He uses a nasal spray and takes allergy pills, and an air purifier hums in his room. If Lorenzo has even a mild cold, Felix said, she will keep him inside, give him albuterol breathing treatments and encourage him to use his inhaler.
“I always have his inhalers and allergy meds, every single day,” Felix said, as she cheered on her son’s teammates from her perch along the first base line.
The sun is setting by the fifth inning, and lights illuminate Garrett Field. Calipatria Little League games run no longer than an hour and 45 minutes, and the sand is slipping through the hourglass as Mark, the Dodgers’ pitcher, steps up to bat. He hits a pop fly, which the Braves’ second baseman bobbles and drops. Mark hustles to first base as his teammate makes it home, scoring the final run of the game.
Running can trigger Mark’s asthma, according to his mom, Vanesa Zendejas, but he says he had no problems this evening. His brother Brayden, though, recalls feeling heaviness in his chest after he ran and slid earlier in the game. Brayden says he removed his helmet and breathed deeply to recover.
“Our coaches tell us to put our arms up and start breathing,” Mark chimed in, clasping his hands behind his head to demonstrate.
Despite Imperial County’s host of environmental challenges, Dr. Chait said, kids with asthma can be active outdoors if they use their medications properly and stay aware of their triggers.
“Usually they’re OK to keep playing their sports and doing everything that they love,” she said.
While the Braves would go on to lose a total of eight games this season, Lorenzo’s coach selected him to play among some of the most dedicated players on the All-Star team. The Dodgers would go on to win 13 of their 14 games, with brothers Mark and Brayden continuing on to the post-season competition.
“They play their hearts out,” Dodgers coach Alejandro Hernandez said over a scratchy phone connection less than a week before the first All-Star game. He adds, “It’s just a bit windy out here today.”
