“We all want clean air and to do something about it.” Now, I think that we have a lot of people interested, the governor of the state and the legislature.”Īs a sign of the unifying power of water, he traveled to the campus of rival University of Utah where the rooftop lab of John Lin, professor of Atmospheric Sciences, measures just how closely air and water are related. “For a long time, I don’t think that people were sufficiently talking for the lake. “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. A new partnership between university researchers and state officials overseeing natural resources, agriculture and food have formed a “Great Salt Lake Strike Team,” and released a report this week urging lawmakers to rewrite water law. Others have since joined the call for emergency measures. “It’s not like scientists to be dramatic,” Baxter laughed, but said there was no hesitation among the nearly three dozen scientists and conservationists who released the frightening report aimed directly at Utah legislators that said the lake was on track to vanish in five years. When she’s not teaching biology, she visits schools, retirement homes and farm conventions to spread the word that every drop of water counts – now more than ever.īonnie Baxter, director of the Great Salt Lake Institute at Westminster College in Salt Lake City, Utah, stands on the shore of the Great Salt Lake. She came to Utah to study this biology 15 years ago and soon realized that the fate of the brine shrimp is directly related to the future of Salt Lake City. “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. With only sail boats and paddleboards navigating the lake, it is so peaceful, 80,000 white pelicans annually nest on islands without fish.īut as the water evaporates without replenishment, the yacht basin is all mud, predators can walk to the pelican nests and the bottom of the food chain is collapsing. Only brine flies and shrimp can survive in the salty water, creating a unique ecosystem that supports 10 million migratory birds. EROS/USGSĪs a so-called “terminal lake,” Great Salt Lake is fed by rain, snow and runoff but with no rivers to take water to the ocean, salt and minerals build up over time. Satellite images show the water levels of the Great Salt Lake in 1987, left, and 2022.
“We know about dust storms, we know about particulate pollution, we know about heavy metals and how they’re bad for humans,” she told CNN. “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. As that mud turns to dust and swirls to join some of the worst winter air pollution in the nation, scientists warn that the massive body of water could evaporate into a system of lifeless finger lakes within five years, on its way to becoming the Great Toxic Dustbowl. When lake levels hit historic lows in recent months, 800 square miles of lakebed were exposed – soil that holds centuries of natural and manmade toxins like mercury, arsenic and selenium. A disappearing Great Salt Lake could poison the lungs of more than 2.5 million people. But megadrought and overconsumption aren’t just threats to wildlife, agriculture and industry here. Like the rest of the West, Utah has a water problem. On the shore of Great Salt Lake, Utah CNN
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