Farnsworth Peak and the Great Salt Lake from a Birds Eye view, Feb. 11, 2024. Joshua Harvey

Five C's that Can Help the Great Salt Lake

Articles about the Great Salt Lake drying up often leave readers with a feeling of powerlessness and despair in trying to confront this situation.

No one is without fault, but feeling guilty is not the answer to the problem at hand. Commitment, compassion, community, consideration and conservation. These are what must be implemented to come to a consensus on what to do.

The Great Salt Lake drying is a wicked problem. Wicked problems are a framework of looking at problems that cannot be solved solely by science or by one solution, characterized by contentious values, paradoxes and trade-offs.

The Northern Colorado Deliberative Journalism Project (DJP) was created with the intention of developing a style of local journalism that focuses on helping a community have difficult, nuanced conversations to address shared problems. This project combines the best practices of traditional journalism, deliberation and social psychology to reinvigorate local journalism through creating a platform where conversations on wicked problems can be had.

The Great Salt Lake (GSL) desiccating is just one part of the larger issue of climate change, the greatest environmental threat of our time. This isn’t meant to discount the seriousness of this issue, but to contextualize it.

Desiccation is the removal of moisture from something. The lack of water that covers the GSL playa can lead to other problems, such as the deterioration of biodiversity and the ecosystem of the lake and exposing heavy metal pollutants such as arsenic to the atmosphere.

The GSL desiccating is not just a threat to ecosystems, migratory bird populations and atmospheric pollution, but to living in Northern Utah in general.

David Tarboton, the Director of the Utah Water Research Laboratory, contributed to the 2023 Great Salt Lake policy assessment by calculating the inflows required to raise the GSL water level to different target levels over different time periods, comparing those to two different inflow scenarios.

“(W)e wanted to distill the challenge of variability down to something that could be… grasped by policy makers which is why we… settled on the drought scenario where we took the five — the worst five year average on record” said Tarboton. This was meant to distill the challenge of variability so that policymakers could understand the urgency required to fix this situation.

Water that would flow downstream to the GSL has been diverted to agricultural sectors. Irrigation is the feature of agriculture that is the supply of water to land or crops to help growth. According to a 2022 study by Utah State University Extension, about 75% to 80% of water withdrawals in Utah are for irrigation, with 68% of that water being consumptive use.

The Doctrine of Prior Appropriation has greatly affected the GSL and water use in general. “It does not necessarily encourage conservation because it’s basically framed as use it or lose it. So, if you acquired a water right for let’s say agriculture, early in the time period when water rights were being acquired, you have to continue to use that water otherwise you will end up losing that water right and that doesn’t necessarily promote getting the greatest value out of that water,” said Tarboton.

The GSL drying up is a visible indicator of drought and overuse of water. According to Public Supply and Domestic Water Use in the United States, an open file report by USGS, Utah residents use more water per capita than almost any other state in the country.

Carly Biedul of Westminster’s Great Salt Lake Institute (GSLI) is an evolutionary biologist and ecologist who has been researching the organisms and ecosystem of the GSL for almost two years.

“In a nutshell, the organism at the bottom of the food chain can not survive or function when lake levels are low due to the high salinity and lack of habitat. The microorganism grows on the Microbialites that once exposed, cannot support microbial life. Those microbes and algae are what feed the brine shrimp and brine flies which then feed the 10 million migratory birds,” Biedul said.

The best conditions for the algae that the chain of life in the GSL rely on are around 12% salinity with any more being a stress, whereas brine shrimp need a much lower salinity that the 19% that was recorded fall of 2022.

Dr. Daniel Mendoza, PhD, in atmospheric sciences at the University of Utah, joint appointment in internal medicine in the Pulmonary Division, and a joint appointment in the department of City Metropolitan Planning at the University of Utah, co-wrote a research article that looks at industrial and GSL playa particle pollution from the lake build up along the Wasatch front.

Back in 2019, Mendoza and the team of researchers he worked alongside started to use passive sensors to collect dust as it falls. “I think that has been a fallacy where many people start to think about dust events and just say that all of the dust is coming from the Great Salt Lake. That is not the case, especially some of the heavy metals which are directly associated with industrial activities” Mendoza said.

Particulate matter (PM), is made up of particles of solids or liquids that are in the air. The scary thing about particulate matter is that PM10 particles (10 microns) can be gotten out of the airway through a cough, where fine particulate matter (2.5 microns or less) can cross a blood-brain barrier that makes them particularly harmful.

”There’s been a lot of push to regulate — reduce PM2.5 emissions and really try to understand them,” Mendoza said. This does not account for the chemical composition of these particles.

Before the threat of dust clouds from the GSL, Salt Lake City has dealt with the problem of air quality due to the inversion that forms by the mountains surrounding the valley trapping pollutants. Atmospheric inversion affects all pollutants through stagnating the air so that pollutants are trapped, which can form pollution blisters where a specific area has stagnant air that builds up the pollution with no way of dissipating.

“The worst case scenario, I don’t want to think about it but ultimately it could be another dust bowl like what happened in California” Mendoza said. This refers to Owens Lake in California that desiccated due to the development of an aqueduct diverting the river’s water to Los Angeles, where dust storms picked up particulate matter of PM10 or smaller from the playa of Ownes lake. Exposure to that particulate matter has been linked to worsen asthma, heart attacks and premature death.

“We need to make state and county level changes to the way that water is used to be able to get enough water to the lake to sustain the ecosystem. There was a report from BYU that states there is 3–5 years before the ecosystem collapse and if there isn’t any change to our water policy that could be a reasonable estimate” Biedul said.

Wasatch Front North of SLC and West Crystal Unit Farmington Bay, Feb. 11, 2024. Joshua Harvey

There have been changes. The newly created position of the Commissioner of the Great Salt Lake has Brian Steed leading the charge to find creative ways to get water diverted to the lake. In talks with the Great Salt Lake Collaborative, Brian Steed has expressed concern over what he calls ‘Great Salt Lake Fatigue’ that refers to returning back to the usage of water that has caused this issue in the first place. This situation demands haste and there needs to be a sustained effort.

Sarah Jaquette Ray created an existential tool kit that combines aspects of mindfulness, psychology, sociology, social movements, mindfulness and the environmental humanities to let go of guilt, resist burnout and build resilience in the face of addressing anthropogenic environmental impact. Her book, A Field Guide to Climate Anxiety, goes in depth in how she came up with the toolkit.

In this book, Ray dispels the idea that guilt is a motivator. Eco-guilt can only motivate people for short-term action. The GSL demands a more sustained, long-winded effort. In settings such as the GSL desiccating, those who advocate will often push aside their own needs in a form of self sacrifice.

“At that point I realized that only if I protected myself and my time would I have the energy to devote to my family, my students, my advocacy work, and my self-care,” Ray wrote in chapter 7. Ray writes in length about how practicing self-care is one of the surefire ways to resist burnout, whether it be making your bed, exercising, feeling the touch of the sun, or sleeping a full night. This might sound banal, but self-preservation is needed to maintain resilience and commitment.

“Ultimately I’m here in Salt Lake City because I like the environment… you just see nature, you just really get to enjoy being outdoors and so this is something that motivates me and makes me want to be part of the solution,” Mendoza said.

In the conclusion of A Field Guide to Climate Anxiety, Ray writes about how resilience and resistance can be used hand in hand to work against perpetuating the status quo that has led to the degradation of ecosystems.

Environmental coalition composed of Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment, Utah Rivers Council, the Center for Biological Diversity, the Sierra Club and the American Bird Conservancy are suing the state of Utah for failing to protect the Great Salt Lake. According to the Utah Rivers Council website, no substantive efforts by Utah Politicians have been taken to raise the GSL water levels.

“What does resilient action look like? It could start with taking care of yourself so you can go on with your life. But ultimately it must become a mutually reinforcing dynamic between the personal and the collective, since part of our personal resilience results from the sense of community that comes from participating in civic life. Everything from voting for candidates we believe in to participating in a world-building culture shift — it all matters, even if we can’t see the immediate effects,” Ray writes on page 142.

One of the main purposes of the DJP is to address wicked problems within local communities by having thoughtful conversations about values. These conversations are meant to allow people in the communities with differentiating values to come together and use compassion to understand why someone holds that value. People deserve to be heard.

There is politicization of issues that is meant to divide people into categories or groups, and the environment has become one of those issues.

“Or, instead of seeing climate change as a battle between two sides, perhaps we should be asking what opportunities for alliances and healing engagement with climate change might initiate,” Ray wrote in chapter 5.

Curiosity, active listening and nonviolent communication must replace the need to “be right” Ray wrote, so that relationships and trust can be built that allows for productive conversations.

”I think we need to be willing to put all options on the table. So we need to be willing to discuss the things that we are uncomfortable discussing which involve maybe changing the water rights structure to be less use it or lose it,” said Tarboton.

Outside of March 30, 2023, Utah has been in a drought. For homeowners, replacing grass or turf with water-wise plants or rocks, installing high efficiency toilets and water efficient shower heads will conserve much needed water.

For those who do not own a home, taking shorter showers, tracking the water bill and meter to curtail water use, turning off water when brushing teeth or shaving and using dishwashers and washing machines with full loads only will have the same effect.

“Ultimately what happens with the lake is going to depend on the choices that we as society collectively make about how much we value the lake versus how much we value the consumption of water and the values we get from the water consumption be it municipal, be it mineral extraction, be it agriculture” said Tarboton.