GOP joins race to stop shrinking of Great Salt Lake
SALT LAKE CITY — The largest natural lake west of the Mississippi is shrinking past its lowest levels in recorded history, raising fears about toxic dust, ecological collapse and economic consequences. But the Great Salt Lake may have some new allies: conservative Republican lawmakers.
The new burst of energy from the GOP-dominated state government comes after lake levels recently hit a low point during a regional megadrought worsened by climate change. Water has been diverted away from the lake for years, though, to supply homes and crops in Utah. The nation’s fastest-growing state is also one of the driest, with some of the highest domestic water use.
This year could see big investment in the lake that’s long been an afterthought, with Gov. Spencer Cox proposing spending $46 million and the powerful House speaker throwing his weight behind the issue. But some worry that the ideas advancing so far at the state Legislature don’t go far enough to halt the slowmotion ecological disaster.
One proposal would tackle water use in homes and businesses, by measuring outdoor water that’s considered some of the country’s cheapest. Another would pay farmers for sharing their water downstream, and a third would direct money from mineral-extraction royalties to benefit the lake.
“I long took for granted the lake. It’s always been there, and I’ve assumed it always would be there,” House Speaker Brad Wilson said at a summit he convened on the issue. But learning about the lake’s precarious position this summer left him terrified. “The Great Salt Lake is in trouble. … We have to do something.”
The shrinking of the lake poses serious risks to millions of migrating birds and a lake-based economy that’s worth an estimated $1.3 billion in mineral extraction, brine shrimp and recreation. Health risks exist, too: The massive dry lake bed could send arsenic-laced dust into the air that millions breathe.
“The Great Salt Lake needs some leaps to be saved. It’s not going to do it with baby steps,” said Zach Frankel, executive director of the nonprofit Utah Rivers Council. “These are tiny baby steps that should have been taken 20 years ago.”
The lake took a pummeling last year, with especially devastating effects on its microbialites, the Great Salt Lake’s version of a coral reef. The mushroom-like structures are formed by furry, deep green mats of microbes, which are the base of the lake’s food chain and main sustenance for brine shrimp.
The shrimp both support a multimillion-dollar industry supplying food for fish farms and nourish millions of migrating birds whose massive flocks can show up on radar. The lake is also the nation’s biggest source of magnesium and could soon provide lithium, a key mineral for renewable energy batteries.
But last year the lake matched a 170-year record low and kept dropping, hitting a new low of 4,190.2 feet in October.