Wasn't the Salton Sea filled by the Colorado River?
I hope someday they connect it to the sea. The area below sea level, El Centro and such, is good for farming, but another inland port seems like a reasonable trade. I'm sure the residents would disagree though. Given enough time, nature will do it for us, as that is one of the rare places where a rift valley is forming on land.
"Metcalf & Eddy, a Massachusetts based firm with almost a century of experience in large scale water resources management, has proposed building two canals, the largest of which would be navigable for ocean going vessels. The cost for digging the U.S. section is estimated at $300 million, with the final pricetag for the completed canals approaching $3 billion. While this is indeed a considerable chunk of money, it is nonetheless a good bargain, considering the increased revenue in land and commerce taxes which local governments stand to gain."
The state capital of Baja California is also less than 10 miles away from El Centro containing upwards of a million people dependent on the fact truck & rail are prioritized over US waterways, which is also at the center of one of Mexico’s very few easily productive agricultural regions (which relies on a canal that would be underwater).
Spoiler alert: people put terrible contaminants in the water that are now dust-borne, and it smells terrible. These are unrelated phenomena.