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 when at its normal level, so 7 feet below minimum safe level, is quite low.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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 when at its normal level, so 7 feet below minimum safe level, is quite low.
[1] https://www.google.com/maps/@41.1985997,-112.4903027,201762m...
https://www.sltrib.com/news/2022/06/26/spiral-jetty-baromete...
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.
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.