Why Utah's Greatest Lake Is Dying Right Now

My book, The Times You Grew Up With, takes you back: https://paulmcallister.store The Great Salt Lake is the largest saltwater lake in the Western Hemisphere — a remnant of a prehistoric inland sea that once covered twenty thousand square miles of the American West. For a hundred and thirty-five years after Mormon settlers arrived in 1847, the lake rose and fell within the same natural range. It never broke through the floor. Then it did. In November 2022, the lake hit its lowest level in recorded history — and the cause wasn’t drought. Sixty-two percent of the river water that once fed the Great Salt Lake is now diverted before it arrives, most of it to grow alfalfa and hay for roughly one million dairy cattle. The Saltair resort that once drew thousands is gone. A railroad causeway built in 1959 split the lake permanently in half. Arsenic sits in the exposed lakebed, and the state got the money to measure whether the wind carries it into Salt Lake City — then didn’t install the monitors. A billion-dollar mineral extraction industry is chasing a retreating waterline. Ten million migratory birds depend on a food chain that’s weakening at every link. This is the story of how a series of small, rational, perfectly legal decisions slowly emptied one of the most extraordinary bodies of water in North America — and why nobody noticed until the numbers stopped making sense. Sources: G.K. Gilbert, Lake Bonneville, USGS Monograph No. 1 (1890) Wayne Wurtsbaugh et al., “Decline of the world’s saline lakes,” Nature Geoscience, 23 October 2017 USGS Utah Water Science Center, Great Salt Lake causeway and water level records — waterdata.usgs.gov Kevin Perry, University of Utah, Great Salt Lake dust and lakebed composition research (2016–2023) Benjamin Abbott et al., “Emergency measures needed to rescue Great Salt Lake,” BYU briefing to the Utah Legislature, January 2023 Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, Great Salt Lake Ecosystem Program — wildlife.utah.gov/gslep/waterlevels