Great Salt Lake Tracker – Grow the Flow
growtheflowutah.org57 points by cfowles 5 hours ago
57 points by cfowles 5 hours ago
It says that it is currently 7.0 feet below the minimum healthy water level and that the healthy water level is 4198 feet.
I bet that will confuse a lot of people who will think that means the lake should be at least 4198 feet deep and it is 7 feet below that. Being 0.17% low doesn't seem like a major problem.
Apparently though lake levels are measured relative to sea level, and Utah is around 4200 feet above sea level.
The Great Salt Lake is only about 15 feet deep when at its normal level, so 7 feet below minimum safe level is quite low.
Worse: The topography there is really flat. Every foot of lake elevation is a massive change in the surface area of the lake. I don't know the exact numbers, but it would not surprise me if there were a mile of change in lakeshore location for a foot of change of lake elevation.
If you look at a satellite image of the Great Salt Lake [1], it looks like there's a digital seam/glitch between the north and the south half of the lake. In reality, a railroad was built through the middle of the lake in 1904, separating the water. The salinity of the north half has since become toxic to all organisms except some algae and cyanobacteria.
[1] https://www.google.com/maps/@41.1985997,-112.4903027,201762m...
I remember I was gunna drive out to see Spiral Jetty, but it's not a jetty right now, so what's the point, you know? And it's not like it's close to the shore or anything -- it's a mile away
https://www.sltrib.com/news/2022/06/26/spiral-jetty-baromete...
I crave an industrial megaproject to solve this. Specifically: A pipeline from the ocean. But alas, only China has a social structure capable of getting projects of this scale done anymore. So I guess I'll keep tracking the AQI and keeping my kids indoors when it's bad.
I always like the idea of megaprojects and several Utah legislators suggested this. It's kind of a dumb idea, though, when you think about it because the vast majority of Utah's diverted water is going towards farming alfalfa to feed livestock, so we could much more easily solve the problem by just importing these end products from a region that is better suited to their production than a desert.
Or even better eliminating or at least reducing animal agriculture that aside from the ethical, health and global warming concerns, is a massive user of local resources relative to the non animal resources.
> Specifically: A pipeline from the ocean.
The environmental cost of building a pipeline 750 miles across the country and then expending all of the energy needed to pump that water would completely outweigh any benefits.
You also don't need ocean water. Salt doesn't evaporate. It's still there. The water could be sourced from anywhere.
They could just buy up water rights from farmers and other heavy users and divert the water in the direction of the lake. A million times easier.
It would probably be better in the long run if we all drove less and walked more, then built a 1,000 mile aqueduct from the ocean to (and I can't believe I'm typing this) replenish the Great Salt Lake.
I'm trying to figure out how driving less and walking more would result in the Great Salt Lake getting an extra million acre feet of water into it per year.
One might argue that would accelerate the collapse of the Great Salt Lake because the vast majority of diverted water is used for agriculture and increasing everyone's caloric requirements would result in more agriculture.
Driving cars releases tons of CO2 into the atmosphere (per car). There are 300 million cars on the road in the States. CO2 is a greenhouse gas that contributes to climate change.
75% of U.S. adults are considered overweight, I would think that walking would first help this problem, as well as be a catalyst to other beneficial habits, including eating less meat and more vegetables, which would further reduce the amount of CO2 released from agriculture, as well as slim people's waistlines.
There have been some ideas to do this from the Salton Sea to the Gulf of California in Mexico but that is about 125 miles and would still cost billions.
To drain the Salton Sea or replenish it? The Salton Sea was created in its present form from a man-made environmental disaster.
I think the idea is a huge waste, but the Utah State Legislature already considered exactly this in 2022 (building a massive pipeline to the Pacific Ocean).
https://www.sltrib.com/news/environment/2022/05/19/utah-legi... (archived non-paywall version: http://archive.today/GzuUD)