"The lake’s flies and brine shrimp would die off — scientists warn it could start as soon as this summer — threatening the 10 million migratory birds that stop at the lake annually to feed on the tiny creatures. Ski conditions at the resorts above Salt Lake City, a vital source of revenue, would deteriorate. The lucrative extraction of magnesium and other minerals from the lake could stop.
Most alarming, the air surrounding Salt Lake City would occasionally turn poisonous. The lake bed contains high levels of arsenic and as more of it becomes exposed, wind storms carry that arsenic into the lungs of nearby residents, who make up three-quarters of Utah’s population. 'We have this potential environmental nuclear bomb that’s going to go off if we don’t take some pretty dramatic action,' said Joel Ferry, a Republican state lawmaker and rancher who lives on the north side of the lake.... In theory, the fix is simple: Let more water from melting snowpack reach the lake, by sending less toward homes, businesses and farms. But metropolitan Salt Lake City has barely enough water to support its current population. And it is expected to grow almost 50 percent by 2060...."
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"If the Great Salt Lake, which has already shrunk by two-thirds, continues to dry up, here’s what’s in store..."
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I'm guessing the solution is for me to surrender something to the author, right?
“Human sacrifice! Dogs and cats living together! Mass hysteria!”
I wonder what kind of precious minerals they could mine from that dried up lake.
Here's an idea. Run a pipeline from the coast of California from desalination plants up to Utah (If we can do it for oil from Alaska...). Oh, right. California CAVEs think those plants are destructive to the environment.
Sounds like what LA did to Mono and Owens Lakes
Does he think the lake just came into being in 4004 BC fully formed and remaining that size until the Monroe Doctrine brought Joseph Smith to Utah and began using the snow melt for drinking, bathing, and farming? I'll argue it has already shrunk by far more than two-thirds, and you only need to look over the hill at Bonneville to see what happens when it is fully dry.
O the farmer and the cowhand should be friends, as Aunt Eller said.
We lived in a suburb of SLC. Outdoor pipes were on a separate, gray water system that was turned off by the city in the winter. Housing developments were encroaching on what agriculture was left. And the air quality over the basin is already almost poisonous because of the inversion layer. I think the rancher is presenting an incomplete picture to the NYT.
OK.
Pull up google maps and click on the terrain button. Scroll on over to Utah & look at the Great Salt lake. The dry salt basins extend far to the west and in other directions too. Seems to me the lake has already mostly dried up.
We brought back some of those brine shrimp in a plastic milk container when we were kids. It saved us from paying for the "Sea Monkeys" advertised in the comic books. I figure just threw them out after we got home.
What did they eat? And what were you supposed to feed the ants in your Ant Farm? We also bought redwood burl and tried to grow majestic redwoods. That didn't get very far either.
Not all that long ago, it was a wet year in Utah and the lake level was too high. Many roads were under water and some were raised to avoid flooding. Huge pumps were bought to pump water out of the Salt Lake and lower its level. Recently, we have had several dry winters and that probably accounts for the current low water level. I suspect we are seeing cyclical "weather", not "climate change". If the NY Times wants Utah to go away, they need to find a different tack.
Utah has the water and reservoirs. They need to ban or curtail use of the water on residential lawns and they’ll be in a lot better shape.
Enter Bill Gates
It's what happens when you build your city in the middle of a mostly dry area, kind of like Los Angeles.
"it is expected to grow almost 50 percent by 2060...."
At what cost to federal tax payers?
I don't mind people living in deserts, hurricane paths, earthquake zones, and bathtubs below sea level, as long as they bear the full cost, including water supply, infrastructure, insurance, and emergency rescue funds.
Plenty of water outside Utah, it just needs to be transported to the Great Lake. LA didnt stop water from growing to an insane size. Same with Mexico city.
Salty Lake City should only allow American citizens to live there. They should round up illegals and put them on buses out of town. 22% of the population is now Hispanic up from around 2% thirty years ago. How many do you think are citizens? If you are going to cry about scarce resources and the need to conserve them you need to start by not letting non citizens use them. Especially non citizens who are not here legally.
Why is America one of the few countries on earth that isn’t allowed to conserve its resources for its own citizens? It’s not like we were Great Britain and colonized half the world from our own little island and now think we need to allow all the children of our old colonies as as reparations.
What a mess. It will probably become like Salton Sea in California over the next decade or so.
I was in Salt Lake City about 20 years ago. The lakebed was dry then, and the closer you got to it, the worse that place smelled. The larger these desert cities grow, just like Los Angeles, they will just steal from everyone else to survive.
Kinda gives pause to the alleged wisdom of B. Young who declared, in 1847, "This is the place."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_Is_the_Place_Monument
Lakes are ephemeral. Do are waterfalls. So are glaciers. So, for that matter, are mountains, though on a longer timeline. This isn't to say there are no consequences when and as they disappear, but to think they are permanent features is not Following the Science.
That said... just before we moved my oldest to Seattle to attend UW, the big article came out about the Cascadia Fault. And now, as we're preparing to move our youngest to SLC to attend UU, this. Sigh...
Doomed ! We're all Doomed! (Waves arms)
From the utah.com travel site describing the history of the lake:
The Great Salt Lake is actually the remainder of prehistoric Lake Bonneville, which covered some 20,000 square miles of land in what is now Utah, Nevada and Idaho some 10,000 to 30,000 years ago. The present lake is about 75 miles long and 35 miles wide, with a maximum depth of 33 feet. After a series of wet years, the lake's surface area may be much larger but it will be only a little bit deeper.
Water levels in the lake are far from constant. During its recorded low in 1963, some of the lake's 10 major islands became peninsulas. In 1983, when the lake reached its historic high, it flooded houses, farmland and the nearby freeway. Huge pumps were constructed to deposit excess water into Utah's west desert. The pumps were shut down in 1989.
Four rivers and numerous streams empty into the Great Salt Lake, carrying dissolved minerals. The lake has no outlet so these minerals are trapped. Continual evaporation concentrates the minerals. Several businesses extract table salt and other chemicals from the lake water.
I clearly remember the National Geographic issue showing the flooding in the 80's, including the lobbies of buildings filled with water and roads under the water.
Damn, I was scared there for a minute, that sounded like the actual apocalypse until you revealed at the last possible moment that this is the New York Times.
Nice trolling, Ann. Nice trolling.
Google Lake Bonneville
The Salton Sea, formed by and fed by the Colorado River water, faces similar challenges. Its waters cover a multitude of environment sins--mostly pesticides and ag runoff from Imperial County.
Challenge: divert water from consumers to mask past environmental sins, or green light desalination.
If anyone can solve the problem, it's the Mormons. As long as they don't have a DEI administrator.
Change happens. Get used to it.
Here in California, they have predicted rising sea levels. In fact, Governor Jerry Brown predicted that LAX would be under water. Now they’re complaining that there’s not enough rain. I think they make up these predictions.
Environmental policy generally, and water policy specifically, is being driven by urban interests aligned with the Dems. These are people who refuse to develop reservoirs and desalination because they have some internalized quasi-theological model of a future miniaturized society in which less water will be enough.
If you need more water, get more water. It's entirely possible, even though it will cost money.
I have an environmentalist heart. I think it’s wrong to let the lake dry up, I don’t care how long it’s been there, how large it was or how many minerals are available. Sometimes we have to let nature have something of its own!!
Althouse mentioned subsidized farming. In many ways, it is. California got free water. Do you know how much water a farm uses? A cow can drink 40gallons/day. Plus all the washing of milking systems. Plus, they irrigate! And w/this inflation/recession shit coming around the bend? Well, they picked Biden. Hope they enjoy the ride down.
Me? I’ll be bit(h*ng and bellyaching the whole way.
EVERY city out west uses more water than they have..
EVERY city out west is forecast to grow 50% by 2060..
see the problem?
The lucrative extraction of magnesium and other minerals from the lake could stop
The magnesium and other minerals will still be there, just easier to get to
That one is really stupid
We need millions of immigrants though.
Gilbar: 85% of the water out west goes to agriculture and is heavily subsidized by taxpayers and not subject to any serious conservation. See the real problem?
EVERY city out west is forecast to grow 50% by 2060..
Seems like a good argument for controlling our borders, right?
#catastrophizing
Every apocalyptic article like this makes me feel like I'm being played.
The story of the little boy crying wolf, is ever present in today's media. And the narrative is always exactly the same. Man is evil.
Since the GSLake is saltier than sea water it’s ideal, you don’t even need desalination, just put sea water in the lake and it will equilibrate, the lakebed is full of various salts, and the lake water is saturated. Utah could fill the desert with solar panels to run the pumps and sell some power to California, to make their grid more unstable. Later Utah and Nevada could have their own desalination plants.
The instability of solar power would not hurt the lake project because you could oversize the pumps to get enough water in daylight hours only. But California would reject it, because it makes sense. Biggest downside is the pipeline right of way thru the Sierras.
My Dad passed in 1978. He told me for years, the next wars would be over water. This is not a new revelation.
The pumps were shut down in 1989.
"Pump Bangerter to the West Desert" was one of the better slogans :)
The pumps were shut down in 1989.
"Pump Bangerter to the West Desert" was one of the better slogans :)
This is why Wisconsin needs to be protective of the Great Lakes.
During the ice age(s) climatic rainfall patterns were greatly altered, resulting in large lakes growing and existing throughout what's now the American West in areas now desert. The largest of these Western ice-age lakes was Lake Bonneville, possessing an area approaching that of modern Lake Michigan among the Great Lakes, together with a maximum depth of well over 900 ft.
At perhaps 15,000 years back an extra influx of water (due to a nearby volcanic eruption, redirecting the Bear River into now flowing into the lake) resulted in Lake Bonneville overtopping the pass (Red Rock Pass in what's now southern Idaho) bordering its northern shoreline — whereupon the pass's basement of unconsolidated debris quickly eroded in the face of the flood down some 300 ft. — with the result that Lake Bonneville largely emptied itself over the course of the subsequent year down Idaho's Snake River canyon, and thence down the Columbia River gorge to the Pacific.
It's estimated that the maximum flow through Red Rock Pass during that year was perhaps 3 times the total throughput of the Amazon River, Earth's greatest river today. Afterwards, with the ending of the ice age, Western climates generally shifted towards arid, whereupon the remainder of Bonneville largely dried up — shrinking until its area was small enough that its average fluvial input (the Bear River today is Great Salt Lake's largest tributary) overmatched evaporation from its surface.
‘Kinda gives pause to the alleged wisdom of B. Young who declared, in 1847, "This is the place." ‘
Wow… it’s as if all that time - and much success - between then and now didn’t count for anything… right, Spencer?
I would pit Utah against ANY other state in the union re: natural beauty and the policies and manner the state is run. The place is second to none. Nicer people than most of the states I’ve visited, as well.
The heck with Climate Change. We need to stop People Change!
The problem is the city population is expected to grow by 50% over the next 40 years...
Ummm, you don't think that's manageable? We don't live in a nomad society where people just move and settle down at their own leisure. Just stop the population growth if you don't have the water to support it.
The end.
2000 years ago the Roman Empire and its contemporaries managed to devastate millions of acres of agricultural land in what is now called Libya, turning vast lands that could sustain, easily, hard working farmers, into a vast desert where the crops and the bounty of earlier years were long vanished dreams.
So of course, if the Romans could do it, the Water Authority of Northern Utah, with its much greater technical skills, can do it.
The article shows up shortsightedness. Cost of water significantly lower than places like LA and Tuscon. State measure to allow homeowners not to water lawns failed after local government lobbying. Honeowner associations prevent members doing same. Americans are nuts.
When the Great Salt Lake dries up, all of the Great Dry Lake's arsenic dust will blow into the lungs of SLC residents who like the Republican Party almost as much as the LDS membership reveres the other Jesus.
And everybody knows that the GOP opposes the wearing of masks, even when death is a likely alternative.
SLC has sufficient water for farms, greenscapes, and people, too. In fact, the Rockys have gone green in the past decade. Perhaps their concern is with Green deficits.
I couldn’t tell if this was blamed on climate change which is ludicrous so I assumed it was. Of course it is not. The answer is to go find/manufacture/pay more for water or move. Quit whining about it.
Given sufficient cheap energy desalination is a practical solution. But you won't get that energy from wind and solar.
Forty years ago the rising lake was threatening Salt Lake City itself. Not a word in the piece about how quickly things can change in both directions.
The Wasatch Range is a narrow mountain that acts as the watershed for the Salt Lake Valley through Cottonwoods Canyons. Skiing resorts in the Wasatch are growing at an exponential rate that will end when the largest network of ski resorts in North America with 100 lifts, 750 runs, and 18,000 acres is completed. Add in the continuing drought in the Rockies and you get trouble, right here in Dry Salt City.
@chickelit wrote: "The Salton Sea, formed by and fed by the Colorado River water, faces similar challenges."
That's a different and much more disgusting situation. The Salton Sea was formed in 1905 by an accidental human-caused overflow of a California irrigation project on the Colorado River. It has been in terminal decline for many decades. Shrinking, bird die offs, fish die offs, stench of exposed mud, failed beach resorts. It was doomed from the start, and is destined to be nothing more than a low-lying drainage pool.
https://allthatsinteresting.com/salton-sea-history
The Great Salt Lake in Utah is a huge natural inland salt collection basin (true sea). It rises and falls over the years but under no threat if nature is allowed to take its course.
bobby said...
"The heck with Climate Change. We need to stop People Change!"
That's been the subtext all along. Same goes for 'reproductive rughts.'
glacial erratic said...
Given sufficient cheap energy desalination is a practical solution. But you won't get that energy from wind and solar.
technically, you CAN get that energy from wind and solar. We already DO.
Solar (evaporation) and Wind (updrafts and cloud movement) are called WEATHER.. That's the problem
Of Course, The Real Problem is: Building Mega Cities out in the Desert
"And everybody knows that the GOP opposes the wearing of masks, even when death is a likely alternative."
So dumb it's frightening.
The city is expected to grow by 50% by 2060. But arsenic poisoning of city inhabitants is also expected. Both cannot be true. I'm guessing the incentive to not be poisoned by arsenic will be stronger than any other incentive to move to the city. Or a solution will be found to prevent the arsenic poisoning.
"Salty Lake City should only allow American citizens to live there. They should round up illegals and put them on buses out of town. 22% of the population is now Hispanic up from around 2% thirty years ago. How many do you think are citizens? If you are going to cry about scarce resources and the need to conserve them you need to start by not letting non citizens use them. Especially non citizens who are not here legally.
"Why is America one of the few countries on earth that isn’t allowed to conserve its resources for its own citizens? It’s not like we were Great Britain and colonized half the world from our own little island and now think we need to allow all the children of our old colonies as as reparations."
The problem here is not illegal aliens. And it is not a problem affecting only Salt Lake City or, for that matter, our nation.
"EVERY city out west is forecast to grow 50% by 2060..
"Seems like a good argument for controlling our borders, right?"
It's an equally good (or greater) argument for legalizing abortion, or even providing government subsidies to pay for abortions.
"The story of the little boy crying wolf, is ever present in today's media. And the narrative is always exactly the same. Man is evil."
No, don't be childish. The narrative is that Man is profligate.
"My Dad passed in 1978. He told me for years, the next wars would be over water. This is not a new revelation."
Yes, I clearly remember someone on television saying the same thing back in the 1980s, that in the 21st Century we would fight wars over water as we then fought wars over oil, (not that we still don't fight over oil).
I live in Utah.
Salt Lake City itself is Democrat. So Gadfly’s “Ha ha dumb Mormons who hate masks will all die!” Is not… true. It would be dumb Democrats mostly.
The west has vast tracts of land; and we grow a lot of food through irrigation. Kill that and food prices will skyrocket.
As for the “This is the place!” Comment from Brigham Young, so what?
Utah and Salt Lake is, naturally, a wasteland. The members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints who fled here picked Utah precisely because no one else wanted it. Everyone went to California or Oregon, which have much better climates. But it was the Church that made the desert blossom as a rose. So yes, “This is the place” where the Church could survive and not be driven out by Illinois Democrats.
I lived in SLC from 1969-1974. The water fountains downtown ran continually - you didn't even need to turn them on. And after I left there was a tremendous flood in 1983.
https://www.ksl.com/article/41402975/looking-back-at-the-1983-flood-that-sent-a-river-through-downtown
At least the dry weather keeps the Mormon Cricket population down.
As a Utah homeowner I am continually harangued by local media about how my lawn is the source of our state’s water woes; but the fact is that 80% of Utah’s water goes to farming. And mostly, it’s not even good for humans—it’s feed for cattle, much of which I understand gets shipped overseas.
I respect Utah’s heritage of farming, and there was a time in our history when it was necessary and appropriate. But that time has passed. Tech, tourism, mining, health care, oil, and the Mormon church are now the primary employers in the state; Utah should re-orient its water policy to favor residential uses and leave the large-scale agriculture to the regions whose climate is naturally suited for it.
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