The Great Salt Lake in Utah is the largest saltwater lake in the Western hemisphere. Nearly 80% of Utah’s population lives within the lake’s watershed and it contributes over $1.3 billion to the state’s GDP each year. It is rapidly disappearing and some estimates warn that it could collapse entirely within the next five years.
Since 1850, the lake has lost 73% of its water and 60% of its surface area. Annually, the lake is losing around 2 million acre-feet of water. As more people have moved to the region, the water that historically fed the lake has increasingly been diverted for agricultural, municipal, and industrial needs. On top of that, over the past few decades, climate change and the worst megadrought in over 1,000 years have altered the cyclical climatic conditions that have always sustained the lake. This year saw the smallest snowpack in Utah on record, so conditions at the lake have reached crisis proportions.
Utah’s state legislature has passed laws to help increase water levels and have earmarked more funding for water conservation programs. There are several forthcoming and proposed programs aimed at salvaging the lake. A new $815 million water reclamation facility will return millions of gallons of treated wastewater a day to an arm of the lake. There may be $1 billion in federal aid which could be used to develop a network of pipelines that could funnel water from wetter regions of the US. New desalination plants in California could also pipe additional water to the lake.
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The Great Salt Lake is in crisis
