The Great Salt Lake is Disappearing: Federal and State Legislative Attempts to Preserve This Vital Resource Have Been Inadequate

January 22, 2025 by Isaac Worsham

The Great Salt Lake’s surrounding shoreline. (Photo: pedrik: https://www.flickr.com/photos/pedrik/22233794086/in/photostream/)

Current attempts to address the desiccation of the Great Salt Lake are inadequate and will result in enormous environmental harm—putting more than 2.5 million Utahns in danger.

The Great Salt Lake is drying up as water consumption increases alongside the Utah Valley’s breakneck population growth.[1] The lake and its surrounding wetlands are a keystone ecosystem in the Western Hemisphere, [2]It is a major source of economic activity,[3] a vital resource in slowing and preventing pollution,[4] and if not preserved, will negatively impact global climate and cause a human health catastrophe.

[5]The Great Salt Lake is a terminal basin, meaning it has no outlet—once water reaches the lake it stays there until it evaporates.[6] The lake has no direct inlet either, “[r]unoff from the Uinta, Wasatch and Bear River ranges provides the primary water source for the lake . . . . Combined, these sources supply nearly 70% of the lake’s water.”[7] The remaining water comes from direct precipitation, groundwater, and intermittent streams in the West Desert.[8]

Since the 1850s, the Great Salt Lake has seen a 73% decline in water and a 60% decline in surface area.[9] As the population increased in the nearby valley, more runoff water has been diverted for various uses, with agriculture dominating 74% of water use in the Great Salt Lake’s watershed.[10] This level of water consumption, which is only predicted to increase as Utah’s population does,[11] is massively unsustainable for the Great Salt Lake system’s stability.[12] Utah has the tools to conserve the Great Salt Lake, but doing so will require a 30-50% reduction in the water consumption in the Great Salt Lake watershed.[13]

Reducing water consumption by 30-50% is a bold request, and appropriately so—a drying Great Salt Lake poses a severe environmental threat. More than 10 million migratory birds frequent the lake, and native species of brine shrimp and brine flies serve as a food chain staple—desiccation of the Great Salt Lake threatens the Utah Valley’s food web and local industry.[14] Additionally, evaporation of the lake exposes organic matter that has been settled in the lake bed for thousands of years to bacteria that break it down into CO2.[15] This process, measured in 2020, accounted for 4.1 million tons of Utah’s CO2 emissions, or approximately a 7% increase in Utah’s anthropogenic emissions.[16]

While ecological, economic, and climate concerns abound, the most concerning short-term element of the Great Salt Lake’s desiccation is the exposure of heavy metals and toxic substances from the lake bed to the open air.[17] Arsenic, cadmium, mercury, nickel, chromium, lead, copper, selenium, organic contaminants, and cyanotoxins have all been detected in the Great Salt Lake’s sediment.[18] “These pollutants can be transported by dust particles smaller than 10 microns (one fifth the width of a hair)”[19] Human exposure to particulate matter of these kinds carries serious health risks.[20]

Legislative attempts at the federal and state levels to address the desiccation have been inadequate.[21] Legislators have refused to commit to short-term solutions, only enacting long-term plans.[22] Without immediate mobilization, the drying is likely to have permanent consequences. The lack of urgency amongst federal and state decision-makers is especially concerning given the historical cases of lake desiccation and the resulting harms.

One such case is Lake Owens, in California, which dried up in the early 1900s, resulting in the worst source of dust pollution in America throughout much of the twentieth century.[23] When wind storms hit the dry lake bed it would kick up PM10 (particulate matter 10 microns or smaller), which can be inhaled—worsening asthma, causing heart attacks, and even premature death.[24] In the aftermath, local officials successfully sued Los Angeles arguing it violated the rights of communities’ access to clean air, resulting in the city’s 25-year campaign and a $2.5 billion investment in keeping wind from blowing dust out of the lake bed.[25]

Lake Owens covered more than 100 square miles, while the Great Salt Lake, at its historic 2022 low, covered more than 800.[26] The Great Salt Lake is eight times larger than Lake Owens, which likely means significantly more dust, not to mention the heavy metals and CO2 that would also be released if the Great Salt Lake disappeared. The Great Salt Lake is on a similar trajectory to Lake Owens, but this time the litigation invoking the public’s right to clean water and air has come before the lake is gone.[27]

Dramatic conservation action is necessary if Utah is to avoid an economic, ecological, and human health crisis resulting from the desiccation of the Great Salt Lake. The failure of local and federal legislators to meet this monumental moment involving a geographic feature which holds great cultural significance[28] raises a concerning question, “[h]ow quickly are Americans willing to adapt to the effects of climate change, even as those effects become urgent, obvious, and potentially catastrophic?”[29] How can people communicate the emergent nature of environmental harms and motivate legislators to push for the necessary urgent, and immediate action rather than these noncommittal long-term plans? These questions should be seriously considered sooner than later before Utahns, and humanity, run out of time.[30]

 

[1] Benjamin W. Abbott et al., Emergency measures needed to rescue Great Salt Lake from ongoing collapse, Brigham Young Univ.: Coll. of Life Sci.: Plant and Wildlife Sci. 2, 5, 15, 18 (Jan. 4, 2023), https://perma.cc/39FW-7TJM; see also Our Changing Population: Utah County, Utah, USA FACTS (July 2022), https://perma.cc/WH2K-AJDA (Utah County’s population increased 35.1% from 2010-2022, while the national population increased by 7.7% during that same period).

[2] Abbott et al., supra note 1, at 2-3 (The Great Salt Lake supports more than 10 million migratory birds.); Jessie Torrisi, Why We’re in Court to Protect the Great Salt Lake, Earthjustice (Sept. 17, 2024), https://perma.cc/3MFF-VJWP.

[3] Abbott et al., supra note 1, at 3-4, tbl.1 (The Great Salt Lake is directly responsible for ~2.5 billion in economic activity.).

[4] Id. at 4.

[5] Kirk Siegler & Juliana Kim, As the Great Salt Lake dries up, it’s also emitting millions of tons of CO2, NPR (July 28, 2024), https://perma.cc/2U4K-SA6Z; Devika Rao, The Great Salt Lake is getting less great by the year, The Week (Aug. 13, 2024), https://perma.cc/535U-RE2V; Abbott et al., supra note 1, at 9 (“Particulate matter from dried lakebeds can increase rates of chronic and acute diseases . . . including reproductive disfunction, developmental defects, cognitive impairment, cardiovascular damage, and cancer); Torrisi, supra note 2 (There are also environmental justice concerns.).

[6] Current Conditions, Great Salt Lake, https://perma.cc/S528-TR9H (last visited Dec. 27, 2024).

[7] Id.; see also Abbott et al., supra note 1, at 7 fig.6 (map of the Great Salt Lake watershed).

[8] Current Conditions, supra note 6.

[9] Abbott et al., supra note 1, at 2; Maanvi Singh, ‘Last nail in the coffin’: Utah’s Great Salt Lake on verge of collapse, The Guardian (Jan. 10, 2023), https://perma.cc/9FL5-SCGG.

[10] Abbott et al., supra note 1, at 6-7 fig.5 (9% of redirected runoff is used by cities and industry, 9% mineral extraction, and 8% in reservoir loss).

[11] Christopher Flavelle, As the Great Salt Lake Dries Up, Utah Faces an ‘Environmental Nuclear Bomb’, N.Y. Times (last updated Jun. 22, 2023), https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/07/climate/salt-lake-city-climate-disaster.html (“[M]etropolitan Salt Lake City has barely enough water to support its current population. And it is expected to grow almost 50 percent by 2060.”)

[12] See Abbott et al., supra note 1, at 2, 13 (average streamflow needs to increase by an average of ~2.5 million acre-feet per year to reverse its decline).

[13] Id. at 13, fig.12.

[14] Id. at 2, 4; Siegler & Kim, supra note 5 (shorebird populations are already in decline).

[15] Rao, supra note 5.

[16] Id.; Siegler & Kim, supra note 5.

[17] Abbott et al., supra note 1, at 8-9 (human activities have deposited heavy metals and organic pollutants over time).

[18] Abbott et al., supra note 1, at 9; Flavelle, supra note 11; Torrisi, supra note 2.

[19] Abbott et al., supra note 1, at 9.

[20] See Id. (reproductive disfunction, development defects, cognitive impairment, cardiovascular damage, and cancer; see also Flavelle, supra note 11 (“. . . nearby residents . . . make up three-quarters of Utah’s population . . .”); Torrisi, supra note 2 (neurological impacts); Singh, supra note 9 (exacerbate respiratory conditions as well as heart and lung disease).

[21] See Abbott et al., supra note 1, at 11-12.

[22] See id. at 12.

[23] Flavelle, supra note 11.

[24] Id.

[25] Id. (Attempted strategies include: “Covering the lake bed in gravel. Spraying just enough water on the dust to hold it in place. Constantly tilling the dry earth, creating low ridges to catch restive dust particles before they can become airborne.”).

[26] About, Great Salt Lake, https://perma.cc/27EV-X6LT (last visited Dec. 27, 2024).

[27] See Torrisi, supra note 2 (Earthjustice has initiated litigation in September 2024, invoking the public trust doctrine that holds hope for preventing further desiccation.).

[28] See Abbott et al., supra note 1, at 4, 9, 17.

[29] Flavelle, supra note 11.

[30] See also id. (quoting republican lawmaker and rancher, Joel Ferry) (“We have this potential environmental nuclear bomb that’s going to go off if we don’t take some pretty dramatic action . . .”); Id. (internal quotation mark omitted) (“The stakes are alarmingly high, according to Timothy D. Hawkes, a Republican lawmaker who wants more aggressive action . . . . ‘It’s not just fear-mongering,’ he said of the lake vanishing. It can actually happen.”).