Is the Great Salt Lake almost gone?

A new scientific report warns the lake is on track to disappear in the next five years, unless water use is cut by as much as 50% annually. I don't know of any other environmental threat that's moving this quickly, said Bonnie Baxter, a Westminster College biochemist and one of the authors of that study.



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A recent report found that the lake could essentially disappear within five years. As a key stopover for migrating birds, the lake's loss could undermine whole ecosystems. These salty lakes occur in so-called endorheic basins—places where there is no outlet for the water to flow out to sea.

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Water experts say it's going to take more than one big year to fill the Great Salt Lake. SALT LAKE CITY — Ever since The Great Salt Lake hit its lowest water level on record in November 2022, concerns over things like arsenic in the exposed lake bed have only grown.

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A recent report found that the lake could essentially disappear within five years. As a key stopover for migrating birds, the lake's loss could undermine whole ecosystems.

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However, the most deleterious effect of the Great Salt Lake drying up is that the air surrounding Salt Lake City could sporadically become poisonous. Since the bed of the Great Salt Lake holds high levels of dangerous particles like arsenic, antimony, copper, zirconium, and various heavy metals.

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SALT LAKE CITY (ABC4) — The Utah Division of Water Resources is sharing good news about the impacts all the rain is having on the Great Salt Lake, whose water levels reached a historic low last year.

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Most recent data within water-surface elevations show a downward trend. With climate change and Utah's ever growing human population, we expect this negative trend to continue. In fact, it is estimated that the lake is 11 feet lower due to human diversions.

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Lake Levels Due to its shallowness (an average of 14 feet deep and a maximum of 35 feet deep), the water level can fall dramatically during dry years and rise during wet years. When snowpack melts in the spring, the lake usually rises about 2 feet. However, record snowpack in 2023 triggered a rise of 5.5 feet!

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One of the world's largest hypersaline lakes, the Great Salt Lake is on the verge of collapse due to climate change, drought, and population pressures that have reduced inflows and shrunk the lake by more than two-thirds.

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Swimming in the Great Salt Lake is safe despite contaminants, researchers say - Axios Salt Lake City.

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In the 1950s, the bridge was rebuilt with rock, creating a causeway that severs the lake's North Arm from its major sources of fresh water. As a result, the North Arm has grown increasingly salty and hostile to most life, except for microorganisms like halobacteria and red algae that thrive there and give it its color.

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Compass Minerals announced in 2021 it was seeking to extract lithium from the Great Salt Lake under a pilot program. The company, which has a plant in Ogden, said it was utilizing new methods of extracting the precious resource within the ambient brine of the Great Salt Lake.

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Even when the water temperature is in the 20's (°F), the lake does not freeze, due to the high salt content of the water; but icebergs have been ob- served floating on the lake's surface, formed from freshwater that flows into the lake from tributaries and freezes on the surface before it mixes with the brine.

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Set a lake elevation range goal. Invest in conservation. Invest in water monitoring and modeling. Develop a holistic water management plan.

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Improving watershed management In the past year, we've signed HB410, which creates a $40 million trust to increase water for Great Salt Lake and improve the lake's upstream habitat; and HB429, which requires the Division of Water Resources to study and gather data about five watersheds that feed Great Salt Lake.

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“Impressive winter precipitation and record-breaking snowpack have undoubtedly improved the situation of Great Salt Lake,” Hasenyager said. “However, it's important to note that it will take much more than one above-average winter to fully replenish the lake's water levels and address our long-term challenges.”

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“We're not going to be bailed out by excess snow,” Baxter said. “We're hitting these pressures of climate change now. Mother Nature is not likely to cooperate with five landmark years, so to expect this to happen five years in a row, that's not going to happen.”

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To augment the declining Great Salt Lake , a pipeline has been proposed to pump seawater from the Pacific Ocean. As extreme as it sounds, the idea is still being considered almost a year after it was first raised.

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The shallow bottom of Great Salt Lake supports a microbial carpet that harness the sun's energy through the process of photosynthesis. This carpet is made up of a community of microbes, including several types of cyanobacteria (also known as blue-green algae), algae and other organisms.

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