IN FOCUS Discussion: The Shrinking Great Salt Lake

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The silvery blue waters of the Great Salt Lake sprawl across the Utah desert, having covered an area nearly the size of Delaware for much of history. For years, though, the largest natural lake west of the Mississippi River has been shrinking and a drought gripping the American West could make this year the worst yet. The lake's levels are expected to hit a 170-year low this year.

The receding water is already affecting the nesting spot of pelicans that are among the millions of birds dependent on the lake. Sailboats have been hoisted out of the water to keep them from getting stuck in the mud. More dry lakebed getting exposed could send arsenic-laced dust into the air that millions breathe. It blows through a region that already has some of the dirtiest wintertime air in the country because of seasonal geographic conditions that trap pollution between the mountains.

This year is primed to be especially bleak. Utah is one of the driest states in the country, and most of its water comes from snowfall. The snowpack was below normal last winter and the soil was dry, meaning much of the melted snow that flowed down the mountains soaked into the ground. Most years, the Great Salt Lake gains up to 2 feet (half a meter) from spring runoff. This year, it was just 6 inches (15 centimeters), according to experts.

The swirling dust also could speed the melting of Utah’s snow, according to research by McKenzie Skiles, a snow hydrologist at the University of Utah. Her study showed that dust from one storm made the snow so much darker that it melted a week earlier than expected. While much of that dust came from other sources, an expansion of dry lakebed raises concerns about changes to the state's billon-dollar ski industry.

A study from Utah State University says that to maintain lake levels, diverting water from rivers that flow into it would have to decrease by 30%. But for the state with the nation's fastest-growing population, addressing the problem will require a major shift in how water is allocated and perceptions of the lake, which has a strong odor in some places caused by treated wastewater and is home to billions of brine flies.

Lindsay Whitehurst, the reporter with the Associated Press who wrote the article about the Great Salt Lake on Tuesday joined ABC4's Rosie Nguyen on the CW30 News at 7 p.m. for an IN FOCUS discussion about her findings. She shared what led her to reporting about the topic, what jumped out to her about the story, the affect on migratory birds, the impact on people who boat and recreate on the lake, and what worries her the most through what she learned about the lake.

Rep. Tim Hawkes of Centerville, who represents the brine shrimp industry and Dr. Kevin Perry, associate professor of atmospheric science at University of Utah discussed the economic and environmental impact of the lake's current state. They talked about which industries rely on the Great Salt Lake, how the declining levels are affecting those industries, how a smaller lake will have an impact on our snowpack, what Utahns can do to help alleviate this issue, and how dire they think the problem is right now.

Laura Vernon, the Great Salt Lake coordinator for the Utah Department of Natural Resources addressed the need for water in Utah, how that affects the level of the lake, the role of the Great Salt Lake Advisory Council as it relates to the low water levels, the key takeaways from the council's work to help improve understanding about the impact of the lake, whether we're close to the point of no return for the lake, what Utahns can do to help alleviate this issue, and how the Great Salt Lake influences our identity as a state with the capital city being named after it.

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Why would anybody give this a thumbs down? Strange.

musicgroovin

Keep electing people who don't believe in climate change, it's working out great so far.

Wanderer

It's not the drought. It's all the streams rivers that have been diverted. There's not much water going in the lake anymore. I'm tired of people telling lies. Stop the diversions and the lake will fill up

TheBandit

own fault and result of catastrophic environmental policy

TheJens

What would you give for all that water you pumped out of there years ago

floydlarken

It is so bad there is discussion at the capital to change the name of the lake to “The Pretty Good Salt Lake”.

billcunningham

If you look up the Salton Sea on YouTube there are a lot of amazing documentaries about it’s history and what it is like there today … sadly this is the future of Salt Lake.

EulersDisc

Genevieve Atwood
Utah History Encyclopedia, 1994
The Great Salt Lake is the latest in a long succession of often more extensive lakes that have occupied the basin of Great Salt Lake over the past several million years. The sediments deposited in the lake and features formed by the waters of these successive lakes provide impressive geologic evidence about the past, and also provide sand and gravel for construction materials, benches and flat spaces for urban development, and scenic horizontal “bathtub rings” along the surrounding foothills. Lake Bonneville, the most recent larger lake, formed the most striking of these beaches, deltas, spits, and wave-cut cliffs that are as high as a thousand feet above the present Great Salt Lake.
Because the basin of Great Salt Lake has no outlet, water leaves only through evaporation. The temperature and the surface area of a closed-basin lake primarily control the amount of water evaporated from the lake. When precipitation is high, more water is added to the lake by direct precipitation on the lake and from rivers and streams flowing into the lake than is evaporated from the lake; the result is that the lake rises and expands across a larger area of the basin. The surface area of the lake continues to increase until the amount of water evaporated equals the total amount of water entering the lake. During the last 10, 000 years the level of Great Salt Lake has gone through many cycles but the lake has not risen more than about twenty feet higher than its average historic elevation of 4, 202 feet above sea level. When the climate of the region becomes dramatically cooler and wetter, such as during ice ages, the lake in the Great Salt Lake basin rises to much higher levels. One such rise occurred about 140, 000 years ago when the lake in the basin rose to an elevation about 700 feet above the current level of Great Salt Lake, and again about 65, 000 years ago when the lake rose about half that high. The highest and most recent high lake cycle began about 25, 000 years ago and produced Lake Bonneville, a huge lake over 1, 000 feet deep that extended over most of northwestern Utah and into Nevada and Idaho.

queenB

Why it isn’t possible to direct rain water from all flooding regions to Utah’s lake?

bloved

Poor water management and urban planning. You cannot develop cities in the desert. Las Vegas is next.

sethpotter

Only 35 feet deep? I mean how surprised can you be that the lake is drying up? Sounds pretty inevitable.

cornholio

Just drill a hole to the Snake River, the Snake's deep channels were caused by a great flood from Lake Bonneville's 26, 000 square miles dumping north into Idaho 18, 000 years ago. Ask for some of the water back?

PAPOOSELAKESURFER

It hit its record low level before 20 years later it reached its record high level it's a shallow lake so the size of it dramatically increases and decreases this has happened before

BetelWalrus

This is what happens when there is unregulated population growth and resource consumption from an extremely selfish (and probably ignorant) demographic. Too many Utahn's just think about getting rich in heaven, not about the people and communities who are still alive.

MagicDragonKatt

Another problem caused by too many people. It was only 35 ft deep in 1850, you better start conserving the runoff from the mountain feeder streams.

LTV_inc