Many people are aware of the decline of Lake Mead in Nevada, just outside of Las Vegas. The pictures of its bathtub ring and its ever-changing levels are constantly a topic of discussion. But a few hundred miles away sits another lake. Although this lake’s water is useless in and of itself for drinking, another potential crisis has brewed. This is what happened to the Great Salt Lake.
The Great Salt Lake is the largest saltwater lake in North America, existing for tens of thousands of years. It is what is left from a long geologic process involving glaciers, rivers, and evaporation. The lake itself is saltier than the ocean and isn’t particularly deep, but it covers a very large area and is one of the most noticeable features of the state of Utah. Settlement would occur nearby and would eventually establish the largest city in the state, Salt Lake City.
Today, this and its surrounding areas have become their own Megapolis in Utah, whose population is ever increasing. As a combined statistical area, Salt Lake City has reached around two and three-quarter million people, ranking at number 22 in the country. This means that its region of population is larger than that of Columbus, Indianapolis, San Antonio, and several others you might think are bigger.
The vast majority of the people in the state gravitate around Salt Lake City, and thus the vast majority of the water supply is taken from sources that go to the Great Salt Lake. The Great Salt Lake is a small watershed, fed mainly by the mountains nearby. When the snow melts through tributary streams, groundwater is not plentiful in Utah; therefore, the population must rely on these streams.
While the conventional thinking might be that there’s a drought like there is at Lake Mead, that has not been really the case at the Great Salt Lake. Rather, the shortages are purely more just because there are more and more people taking from the water supply. Even though much of this water is recycled and discharged into the Great Salt Lake, the more people there are, the more the water has to be stored and kept away from the lake.
So why is this important? Why is it important that this salty lake stays on the bed of the lake? There are large amounts of toxic elements such as arsenic, which, if there is no water to cover it, could cause toxic dust storms. Since the settlement of the area in the mid-1800s, the lake is now less than half the size that it originally was, and the population of the surrounding area only seems projected to continue to grow.
If the lake gets too low, the potential toxic dust storms can cause areas around the lake to be uninhabitable. And if the lake dries up completely, there could be a net negative water supply, as that would mean there is no excess water left to discharge into the lake.
So what’s happening here? Essentially, places like Las Vegas, Arizona, and Utah were never meant to have this many people living there. None of the water supply infrastructure is nearly as reliable as those out east, yet most of the places out west continue to grow at high rates. Be it through agriculture, watering lawns, or just personal use, the demands are ever growing.
So much so that there really is a finite limit as to how much people can rely on tributaries of lakes such as the Great Salt Lake. And if there is any massive drop in the snowpacks as there has been in the Colorado River Watershed, the situation could change very rapidly. While so far the Great Salt Lake area has been able to avoid many of the issues that the Lake Mead area has, it remains to be seen if that can continue.
