You know the Salt Lake, from which Salt Lake City gets its name? It’s called the Great Salt Lake, though the superlative “great” is a bit of an overstatement considering its current condition. A severe decline in water levels is threatening its long-term viability.
A study published in the scientific journal Environmental Challenges says nearly two-thirds of the Great Salt Lake’s shrinkage is due to human consumption of river water that otherwise would have been used to replenish the lake.
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Lakes fill up with water thanks to long, winding, complex networks of rivers, streams, creeks, and tributaries. As our agricultural needs have expanded over the years, we’ve slowly been diverging all that water, mostly for crops that feed livestock. Cows are drying out the Great Salt Lake.
The researchers say the lake’s water levels have constantly fluctuated since people started measuring such things back in 1847. The water levels seen in recent years, however, are lower and much more concerning than they’ve ever been. Water levels have been dropping by about four inches per year since 1987. The lake reached record lows in both 2021 and 2022.
The researchers aren’t without hope, though, and presented some suggestions for pumping up those water levels. They say reducing “anthropogenic” water consumption by 35 percent could restore the lake’s water levels.
Anthropogenic is a fancy word that means environmental change directly caused by or heavily influenced by humans. In other words, if we just make a 35 percent reduction in the amount of environment-harming stuff we’re doing that’s causing the lake to lose water, water levels will return to normal. Easier said than done.
One place to start, according to the researchers, would be to reduce our alfalfa production by 61 percent, alfalfa being a major food source for livestock. They also recommend fallowing of 26 to 55 percent of grass hay production. This plan has a big flaw that you may have already guessed: a significant loss in agricultural revenue—roughly $97 million annually.
Under a capitalist system, people would rather watch the world turn into fine dust that gets blown away by a cosmic breeze than lose out on nearly $100 million a year in revenue.
Yeah, that’s 0.04% of Utah’s GDP, but considering that the researchers say the lake is in one way or another responsible for around $2.5 billion of Utah’s economy and supports around 9,000 jobs, it’s probably a wise idea to keep the lake alive and thriving.
