Like many bodies of water in the U.S. West, the Great Salt Lake is in critical condition. What’s unique about the Western Hemisphere’s largest saltwater lake dwindling compared with, say, Lake Powell’s demise, is what the Great Salt Lake could unleash as it continues to dry up. EcoWatch reports that the lake has decreased by two-thirds of its size over the past four decades, priming it for disaster as the region continues to face drought conditions.
A lack of water leads to an increase of salinity in what’s left of the lake, decimating the lake’s algae and thereby threatening the brine shrimp that feed off of it. The Great Salt Lake is considered an “avian oasis,” bringing hundreds of species of birds to feast on its marine life. Those millions of migratory birds will likely leave the region as conditions worsen.
The threat to humans is also alarming. Three-quarters of Utah’s population lives around the Great Salt Lake—all of whom could be threatened by toxic dust clouds kicked as the lake further dries and fragments of the lake bed itself containing high levels of arsenic break down and break away into the air. The New York Times notes that, in addition to the Great Salt Lake’s bed containing high levels of arsenic, it also contains antimony, copper, and zirconium. Dust clouds containing small particulates from the lake bed threaten human health and are especially dangerous to those with respiratory conditions. Lawmakers are so concerned about this very real threat looming over the Salt Lake City metro they’ve even considered piping in water from the Pacific Ocean to replenish the lake.
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In a recent appearance on PBS Utah’s Hinckley Report, Rep. Tim Hawkes listed examples of lakes that have met disastrous fates from climate change, cautioning that the alarmism surrounding the Great Salt Lake drying up is “not just fear-mongering.”
“The effects have been catastrophic,” Hawkes said. “So if you look at the Aral Sea, which was a very large lake in Central Asia, when that was lost, it just devastated the local economy. You had some of the highest rates of respiratory illness and death in the world. That’s been repeated in Lake Urmia in Iran, and then much closer to home. Just a much smaller terminal lake, Owens Lake in California, became the largest source of dust pollution in North America, and that’s a lake that’s maybe a seventeenth of the size of the Great Salt Lake.”
Experts have pointed to the Owens Lake disaster in California as a possible sign of what’s to come if Utah can’t adequately balance the water needs of a booming population with the crisis in the Great Salt Lake. A 2018 report in Nature succinctly sums up Owens Lake’s demise: “At the start of the 20th century, Owens Lake in Southern California was one of the largest inland bodies of water in the United States. By the mid-1920s, it was gone, drained to provide water to a mushrooming Los Angeles. Over the past 30 years, the city has spent around US$2 billion to undo the damage. It has failed to restore the lake.”
The report highlights what’s happened since Owens Lake was drained and dust pollution all but emptied nearby towns, pointing to a potential silver lining in how California moves forward with what is now largely regarded as a massive salt flat. The stakes are far higher with the Great Salt Lake, and the clock is ticking as large swaths of the U.S. West face water shortages and restrictions.