California's Largest Lake Shrank 70 Square Miles. The Toxic Dust It Left Behind Is a Warning for Every Balance Sheet.

California's largest lake, the Salton Sea, has shrunk by seventy square miles as water gets diverted to cities and farms instead. Desert wind now lifts pesticides and heavy metals off the exposed lakebed and carries them into towns across the Imperial Valley, and researchers at USC and UC Irvine found the dust is stunting lung growth in local kids. The state is racing to cover thirty thousand acres of shoreline by 2028. Soren breaks down why the lake's collapse is really a story about hidden support. The Salton Sea only stayed full because farm runoff poured into it for a hundred years, burying contaminants that were there from the start. He connects that to New York Community Bancorp, whose loan book looked rock solid only because cheap money kept property values climbing, until rising rates exposed the risk that had been sitting there all along. Soren lays out three moves for leaders: name the outside support propping up your best-looking asset, test how that asset performs without it, and clean up the risk early while you still control the timing. View original on Inc. Magazine: A Toxic Dust Crisis Is Unfolding in California. The Leadership Lesson Is Hard to Ignore