Mary Pintea – News Editor

Mvp5879@psu.edu 

As most western United States have learned, droughts have serious consequences. Most states, whether coastal or not, are experiencing much longer dry periods that cripple agricultural infrastructure, wildlife, and other industries. Utah is no different. 

The disappearance of the Great Salt Lake is a growing threat to more than 2.5 million people and their respiratory health, which scientists predict could happen in the next five years. With lake levels hitting historic lows, 800 miles of lakebed are left exposed, giving rise to natural and artificial toxins like mercury, arsenic, and selenium. As the mud dries and turns to dust, these chemicals pollute the air. 

“This is an ecological disaster that will become a human health disaster,” warned Bonnie Baxter, Director of the Great Salt Lake Institute at Westminster College in Salt Lake City, Utah. 

“We know about dust storms, particulate pollution, heavy metals, and how they’re bad for humans,” she told CNN. “We see a crisis that is imminent.”

Great Salt Lake is a terminal lake—also known as an endorheic basin—and does not connect to other bodies of water, leaving drainage to swamps and other small lakes. Water levels depend on rain and snow for replenishment, both of which are becoming much more infrequent. Without a place to dispose of mineral and chemical buildups, the soil and mud surrounding the lake absorb the water and, in turn, the chemicals. 

Worse yet, Great Salt Lake is home to 10 million migratory birds that feed off of the brine, flies, and shrimp that live in the water. The flies and shrimp rest at the bottom of the food chain, providing most of the animals that reside around the salty water. 

Pelicans are one of the many bird species that nest around the Great Salt Lake, with around 80,000 settling there annually. While the lake diminishes, predators can walk to the pelican nests, harming the pelican population. 

“You’ve got the lake shrinking, the habitat is drying up, and what water is remaining is too salty for [algae and microbes] to survive,” Baxter said. Baxter, who ventured to Utah 15 years ago to study the biology of the Great Salt Lake, realized that the brine shrimp’s fate is directly correlated to the future of Salt Lake City. When she’s not teaching biology, Baxter visits community members to raise awareness, explaining that every drop of water counts. 

She explained that nearly 36 scientists and conservationists released a report compiling evidence of the inevitable disappearance of the Great Salt Lake and the repercussions of the area. The group presented this information to Utah legislators. Soon after, the “Great Salt Lake Strike Team” was formed: a partnership between university researchers and state officials that oversee natural resources, agriculture, and food. The team urged lawmakers to rewrite water conservation legislation. 

“We have to get more water to the lake,” said Steed, Executive Director of the Janet          Quinney Lawson Institute for Land, Water and Air at Utah State University and a co-chair of the strike team. “For a long time, I don’t think people talked sufficiently about the lake. Now, I think that we have a lot of people interested, the governor of the state and the legislature.” 

The more than 2 million people who live in Salt Lake City and along the Wasatch Front from Ogden to Provo suffer some of the worst winter air pollutions in the country, with tiny particles forming dense brown clouds. The continual drying of the Great Salt Lake will only worsen this, leading to more pollution. 

As a cautionary tale, researchers cite California’s Owens Lake, which was drained by developers in the 1920s to build Los Angeles and inspired the watery 1974 noir “Chinatown.” By 1926, the terminal lake was dry and producing billowing clouds of fine, toxic dust, which became known as “Keeler fog,” forcing people in the town of Keeler to leave. 

A century later, every time a resident of Los Angeles pays a water bill, a fraction goes to a dust mitigation program run by the city’s Department of Water and Power to pay for continual clean-up efforts. After decades of moving water and gravel to control the dust, the bill for draining Owens Lake is $2.5 billion and climbing. 

“There are fights,” said Brian Steed, Executive Director of the Janet Quinney Lawson Institute for Land, Water and Air at Utah State University and a co-chair of the strike team. “But what gives me hope is that we’re seeing much more collaboration than I have seen in my lifetime, especially around something like the Great Salt Lake. There was a time when people thought, ‘Any water that makes it there, well, that’s just lost water.’ Now we’re seeing that the stuff that makes it there is important to all of us here,” Steed said.

As for Baxter, she noted, “I think that the cheapest solution is for the state to buy some of the farmers out of their water rights and release some of this water in the natural system. I know the farmers that I’ve talked to, and they want to be part of the solution. They live here too.”