Trying to avert disaster, Great Salt Lake

In September of 2023, UPHE and other groups announced a lawsuit aimed at preserving Great Salt Lake. And it’s a good thing, because the legislature proved to do little to bring hope.

“The dry conditions — brought on by too much water being diverted away from the lake and toward farmland, as well as drought conditions exacerbated by climate change — were already leading to toxic dust and increased salinity that was upsetting the natural balance of the ecosystem,” the Cool Down reported.  

There have been a few examples of lakes drying up, and the consequences are dire. The Aral Sea was the fourth largest body of inland water in the world, and dried up in just a few decades because of water diverted for agriculture. Since the 1960s, 90% of the lake is gone. The Aral Sea was not a saline lake, like Great Salt Lake is, but the decrease in water levels increased the salinity, killing fish and even land animals. 

“It took a few decades for the lakebed to become dust, its parched sediment satiated by a few cycles of wet weather. When the pollution did begin to blow, however, Owens Lake earned a notorious reputation. It became the largest human-caused source of dangerous PM10 emissions in the nation,” The Deseret News wrote of Owens Lake in California. Owens Lake is 12x smaller than Great Salt Lake. 

The Utah legislature needs to take note of these two examples, and realize that for Wasatch Front residents, the consequences of Great Salt Lake drying up are far more extreme. A dust bowl 12x the size of the former Owens Lake, with far greater salinity impacts than the Aral Sea.