Will the Great Salt Lake ever fill up again?

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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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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“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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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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New analysis says Great Salt Lake can be saved, but not without great effort, and expense.

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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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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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All of this winter's rain and snow that fell directly into the Great Salt Lake increased the water level there by three feet.

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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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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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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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Essentially, a water trust would pay irrigators to leave some or all of the water they are permitted to use in the stream or river instead of diverting it to water crops. These water leases could last a single summer or several years. Water leasing is helping restore other ailing saline lakes.

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So just how bad is it, really? 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.

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The precipitous drop in water levels, which has shrunk the Great Salt Lake's footprint by half in the last decades, stems from a two-fold problem: Climate change has decimated the mountain streams that feed the lake, while demand for that same freshwater has ballooned for new development, agriculture and industry.

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A) The Great Salt Lake is so salty that the only living things in the lake are algae, bacteria, brine shrimp and brine flies. B) Algae is a very small plant and that is the diet of the brine shrimp and brine fly.

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Recreation in, and around, the lake The best place to swim or float in the lake is at Antelope Island State Park, where white oolitic sand beaches provide easy access to the lake without the brine flies that are prevalent on other areas of the shoreline. The beach area also has showers to rinse off the salty water.

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The lake provides major economic benefits The Great Salt Lake doesn't just benefit birds — it helps the economy. According to the Utah Division of Water Resources, the lake's annual economic output is $1.32 billion. The total labor income is $375.1 million and it's responsible for 7,706 jobs.

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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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