As Utah's Great Salt Lake Dries Up, Economic Crisis Looms | WSJ 

I'm dissapointed that this video didn't point out that agriculture is taking 80% of the water runoff from great salt lakes, and a lot of that is growing crops that are extremely poorly suited for our environment here. Alfalfa farmers in Utah are using insane amounts of water to grow a crop that accounts for 1% of our Utah GDP - 80% of the water for 1% of Utah GDP is just a terrible investment. Also when you look at the fact a large portion of the alfalfa is exported to China we are literally destroying the great salt lake and exporting its water to China. Utah's governor is an alfalfa farmer himself so we don't have much hope around here

Turns out running water intensive agriculture in arid environments is a bad idea... who could have guessed?

The annoying thing about watching these videos is people and business owners complaining about an impending disaster but not discussing cutbacks they can make to mitigate the problem.

It's not about raising water prices for regular citizens. The alfalfa farmers use the most water. Two-thirds of all water diverted in Utah go to growing hay (said Gabriel Lozada, professor at UofU), and because farmers buy water rights, they don't have to pay based on consumption.

Scientists have been warning about this since I was a child and I have grey hair coming in. Unfortunately, sometime in the early 80s, we went from a country that could surmount any challenge, to a helpless country that could only address issues if the solutions were profitable enough to a small group of the wealthy. We get what we deserve.

Utah has an alfalfa farmer for a governor. This ensures the lake's demise.

86% of the water supply is going to animal agriculture that only is around 1.9% of the total economy of Utah. Seems like an easy answer

Most of Utahs water usage is from agriculture (82%). This is where lawmakers need to focus their efforts. There should not be as many farms as there are in a literal desert.

I live in the salt lake valley and have done landscaping for 10 years. I personally think that the main offender of water waste is huge green lawn's. So much water is wasted on yards and acres of grass. We live in the desert. We must design our landscapes to fit our climate.

The lake needs water, but nobody wants to take a cut. It's time like these someone needs to make a difficult decision, whether it's scaling back agriculture, or investing in water reclamation. Unilateral action has to be taken soon.

I am sorry to say this and I know there's been generations of farmers in Utah but we have to talk about the fact that over 80% of our water goes towards agricultural needs. We live in a semi desert State there should be some kind of laws to either help them move or the answer here is decreased water to agricultural products let all that water go towards the lake at least for a couple of years so the lake can fill up again

The people who care have always cared. The people who don't, never will.

One of the reasons I moved away from Salt Lake City was because that lake is drying up. It's full of nasty heavy metals that will blow across the valley when the lake bed is exposed.

As a Utah native and Salt Lake County resident, it is devastating to have watched this beautiful place be destroyed. I’m in my 50s and looking to relocate. The population growth and housing has absolutely ruined this place.

the lakes did not "dry up" they were drained due to overuse/misuse.

As a ecologist I've reach out to the senators and governor for utah to address these issues. But they have done nothing to establish a simple process of slowly filling the lake bed with water. This would increase our humidity levels and bring in normal monsoon seasons and heavier snow. So it's time for every utah resident to pressure our elected officials to start filling the lake bed or vote them out of office.

I went to Antelope Island just yesterday. Haven't been out there for probably 30+ years. You could see where the water used to be and it's quite alarming. Small marina as you get to the island completely dry. Oh yeah, it's not an island anymore with that stretch of road being dry for several hundred yards out on the north side

Yet people from other areas keep moving to Salt Lake, just exacerbating the problem. September 7th temperatures were 107° with particulate matter in the unhealthy levels. The future for the area right now is certainly very bleak.

It's sad that this was 💯% caused by human activity.

Shame on Utah leadership.

When I was a kid in the 70’s, my parents would take the whole family there for family fun. It was always fun to float around the shores, and it was only knee deep. Now it stinks there, and the brine flies are everywhere. How times change.

If people used more water-efficient practices, like swales and berms, permaculture farming, beaver dam analogs, etc., they’d go a long way to resolving their water crisis.

As many people have said, how could you not talk about Agriculture? Great documentary otherwise though. Loved the mineral extraction piece.

Remember when we use to laugh at USSR for destruction of Aral Sea with bad water management and water intensive irrigation for cotton farm? But I guess when America does it for capitalism it's all cool!

We have pipelines for oil and gas, we need to build desalinization plants and build pipelines. Drawing from freshwater sources will only take one areas problems and make them another area’s problem. Don’t drain my Great Lakes for your decision to live in a desert and wonder why you have no water.

Seems unfortunate that the brine ponds don't have greenhouse style roofs that could collect the condensation and run it back out the lake or for urban use. I guess the roofs would be expensive to build, but, but they would increase the evaporation rate and recover much of the water.

On average, the NSA's Utah Data Center uses between two and four million gallons of water each month. Facebook consumed 13.5 million gallons in the year between June and May. All of this is used to take and store data on the US citizens. I'd rather use this water for food and drinking.

Such an oxymoron - "the lake's dehydration is reducing the amount of water we NEED for our *EVAPORATION PONDS."*

Is Utah doing all that it can? I don't think the leaderships praying alone will help.

Drove through Salt Lake City last year on a road trip. I couldn't believe the traffic through that corridor. It rivals LA traffic. Couldn't get through there fast enough.

In one documentary, it insightfully analyse the depletion of water from aquifer (below ground level) which serves as irrigation (free resource) for industrial scale farming (grain or cows in US Oregon). What you see in the video is visible level........but those invisible level (aquifer) is more significant.

Owens Lake didn't "dry up" it was drained by Los Angeles for the water.

I’ve picked up loads of salt from that Morton plant. Very eerie place.

They should just bring in restrictions until the lake can recover to sustainable level. Nice video. Keep up the good work.

The entire American southwest region is in a very vulnerable position yet more people keep moving there.

Hmmmm corporations draining resources at the cost of the neighboring community… sounds like they should be tapped to help fix it.

I love how Utah plans on burdening the people by raising the cost of water to human consumers. As if that will do anything at all considering the biggest consumer is agriculture growing feed crops. Failed to mention that wsj?

It’s crazy that all these water reservoirs in the desert are drying up…

Ahh yes, maybe we can come up with some quick solution for now that’ll push the lake from completely drying up into the future. So we can continue or probably increase our consumption. Yeah that’ll work.

Me: "hmmm this sounds like bad news" *looks out window and sees dry lakebed*

I live on the lake and I still don't see how the benefits of saving the lake outweigh the cost. Air quality has always been a problem here as it is a dusty desert. The question becomes, who gets to pick what industries live and what industries die? This vid fails to take into account the cost of saving the lake

It's almost like we were warned about this for decades, but people were like "eh this is natural it'll be fine" honestly if humans die off because we didn't want to take precautions we deserve it.

Great story 👍 I didn't know it was that bad , Thank you for this video, I feel for you 😢

Shows a water diversion chart but doesn't talk about agriculture?

They need to limit the agriculture water intake from feeding rivers. why was this not emphasized more? it is the largest water use and the one that needs to be limited most. but farmers have big pockets, so they will be last to be regulated. but when the water runs out of the lake, and their crops are covered in dust and they ruined others and themselves by their greed it will be too late for correction, of course once they stop taking water from the rivers the lake will fill back up, but so much damage will be done. The US has millions of good acres of some of the best farmland in the world, we don't need to turn the desert into farms.

yes drying lakes for wsj it is always economical not ecological

I think they're down playing the impact that the industrial use of the lake is having on the water level of the lake. They mention it but it doesn't seem like it's a factor they want to control.

Would have been nice if the WSJ and Fox News had been thinking about the economic impact before pushing the idea that climate change wasn't real

Will anything truly effective be done to save the lake? Probably not.

Yikes. That’s concerning

It's still a pretty good lake..

I was in Utah summer of 2019. The lawns there in the summer are greener than they are in Seattle.

Utah resident here This is actually informative journalism. Wow, it's like a refreshing glass of water. Though I'll still take main stream media, any media for that matter with a grain of salt. I used to joke that the South Valley drought was brought to you by the NSA, since they have a massive server farm closer to Utah lake about 45 min to an hour South of The Great Salt Lake. Now Facebook is out there I think, and tons of others, they call it Silicon Slopes. So not issuing more permits is too little too late, the big players are out there already. And bottled water, and the various flavored beverages of your choice is decimating water supplies the world over. So we have a huge lifestyle and industry change there. I'm aiming vegan so the alfalfa isn't feeding my meat. Im fine if job losses start in the meat industry. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, my church, has a word of wisdom that says to eat meat sparingly, but nobody seems to be listening to it. I see so many places with broken sprinklers watering the streets, public schools that likely don't have staff to manage it properly. Canal water rolling down the gutters, filthy. I wouldn't use that to water my veg garden. Motor oil, etc. No. Return it to actual canals. I've toured a few of our waste water treatment facilities, very impressive. Tight ship. Potable water is returned to the Jordan River that should flow to the lake.... that's returned residential water, where's it going? Residents are encouraged to let lawns die while industry apparently was getting a free pass for years. The coveted exponential growth is coming at a heavy price. While residents do need to learn conservation practices, and I'd love it if the US adopted trash sorting like Japan, but industry needs big changes. Dear Engineers, Challenge: Server farms need entirely different solutions. Sorry but this is only going to be solved with a top down approach, that does include residents, but government corporate gaslighting of residents continued will only turn this place into a dust bowl.

As a kid in the 80's, I remember so much hubbub about air pollution, car exhaust, etc. If we had undertaken a serious tree-planting effort then, look at all the residual impacts those trees would have on the world, today - 40 years later

Not saying that water is plentiful, but this photo contrasting 1987 and now is MISLEADING. 1987 was plagued by EXTREME RECORD FLOODING in Utah.

The record high for the GSL was in 1986 just 36 years ago. We know for a fact the GSL has completely dried out at least once before modern records.

reminds me of the shrinking of the aral sea. that was a massive failure

I'm sure if we keep focusing on earning profits all these environmental problems will resolve themselves 🤷🏼‍♂️

I'm wondering, with such a water shortage, how do you even think of widespread fracking?

See the Aral Sea in Kazakhstan for a related story. (I was reminded of that during Morning Prayer this morning.) That was a huge lake drained for irrigation of cotton I think the idea was, and then over time it dried up. Mitigation measures have brought parts of it back but not all of it. Hard to know what the solution is but perhaps inviting more people and agricultural resources to an arid area is not a good idea.

Increasing the water bill should only be done after a certain amount of usage. Don't punish everyone, tax the heavy users

Xeriscaping should be the only option for arrid climates, watering grass and golf courses should not be legal.

I care zero about the economy but 100% abiut the ecosystems there.

I live in Salt Lake City and I can tell you we can do a LOT more to be more water efficient. But this needs to come from city counsels and the governor's office. Home developers install huge fields with Kentucky bluegrass that is very thirsty for water to keep green. Farmers' alfalfa fields use up huge amounts of water. LDS churches and city buildings all have huge grassy fields which are watered almost always during the hot noon day hours while hypocritically ordering residents that they cannot water during such times (yes the LDS church is a huge part of the political leadership in utah). We need to emulate Las Vegas Nevada and recycle the water as much as possible and allow to be drained into the lake.

Unmentioned is that the 80's baseline for this segment was a period of intense flooding for the lake. The only time it was higher was 1873, so really this was a hundred year flood. I80 across the salt flats was nearly inundated and huge pumps to get water out to the western desert were installed. There was so much water in 1983 that Main Street through downtown Salt Late City was sandbagged on both sides and turned into a river for about a week. Many of the diversion projects vilified in this segment were undertaken to prevent reoccurrence. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-9dfJwFASQiY.html Also unmentioned is that at the current level the lake is still 25% larger than it was in 1963, lowest recorded. It is popular to take cheap shots at mismanagement but nature has been doing as it pleases since the beginning of time.

To many people living in a Desert.

2.5 billion dollars for the Owens lake dust mitigation was paid by LADWP which is a City of Los Angeles department. Los Angeles county didn't pay for the dust mitigation costs.

Mississippi River at record lows… the west in a drought draining the Colorado… the Salt Lake shrinking… something universal is happening.

There are two inaccuracies in this video (I recommend you watch Mic the Vegan's RU-vid video that addresses this same topic): 1. The lower water levels have not been influenced by climate change. They have occurred purely from water diversion. 2. There is an easy solve - stop alfalfa and hay farmers from using the water. 80% of the diverted water is used by the agriculture industry and that industry is a fraction of Utah's economy. Not worth it

Why is there almost a defined line in a lake in the intro footage? Half is darker green the other half is not.

That may not be a fair picture because you could take one picture at summertime and then you can take one picture at winter time there's a big water flow that comes out of the mountains in salt lake City Utah plus it could rain more in the winter time you know you have to imagine everything dries up and melts in the summertime at least a little bit

I live in Utah - The Great Salt Lake is a bit of an ecological wonder, but otherwise there's nothing special about it. And any changes surrounding the lake have very little to do with our economy. As for drying up ... well, Utah is currently experiencing a rather severe drought just like many place in the Western United States. But we're making up for it now. Last winter was one of the wettest winters in Utah's history, which is quite grand for a state which has always been the second most dry state in the country.

Overpopulation. Too many people moving into Utah, and we send too much water over to California as well. The only reason it ever got so full was because of record flooding in 1983. There's an expensive solution. Utah gets its rainfall and snowpack from lake effect, (air picks up water moving across the lake and dumps it on the mountains). There's not enough water for good lake effect. If we pumped water from the ocean in California, into the Great Salt Lake, we would get back our lake effect, end the drought, and have plenty of water to send to California for them to dump in the ocean for an endangered minnow.

A fertilizer "used" not required!!! by building soil we do not need synthetic fertilizers

Home sweet home. While studying welding processes at SLCC two decades ago I sought out other avenues to quench my thirst for knowledge quite literally and attended with the chemistry department a tour of Swire Coca Cola. I forget how many hundreds of thousands of gallons of fresh water used daily in the manufacture of these drinks. Along with Kennecott (Rio Tinto) copper mine apparently the vast majority of our nation's magnesium is also sourced from blessed Zion. I was so fascinated by the Mg alloyed aluminum 3004/3104 H19 tempered soda cans; their progressive deep draw forming, sealing and quality control department. Glad I have a few specimens from that tour. Goodness this isn't looking good at all. How saddening.

I literally read about this over 30 years ago, when people were still arguing there was an ice age coming. This is a water management problem. Zero to do with climate panic. Also, no one ever used the lake for boating. LOL. Mainly because you need vastly different engine cooling to operate a speedboat in salt water, when our other plentiful lakes are fresh.

Imagine spending millions on a lakeside mansion only to have it dry up 💀💀

I hike on the dry portion of the lake almost weekly. I'm always amazed at the number of variety of wildlife around me, even on the lake itself. The amount of alfalfa farmers and their crops didn't increase, the local population did increase.

Tell us what the “projects” are

We got oil pipelines from the artic to texas. But we cant build pipelines from heavy water areas to dry areas? So stupid

85% of the water goes to animal feed and the cows that eat it thank you farms. Oh 90% of your water goes to farms but 3% is food you can eat 2% will be turned into ethanol. So homes 4% inside 6% outside so 10% for the people.

People need to get over it and understand we need to change our way of life. It's not and never was sustainable. Density with more planned cities to mitigate waster from people and conservation will be key. I honestly don't see this in a city that exist today. Too many corporate landlords and slow local government to make it happen in major cities today. Definitely see a lot of climate migration coming to east. They definitely aren't ready for it. Le sigh...

“Ooh save the planet.” All I hear is.. “give the government more of your money”

What a difference a year makes.

There are a lot of misconceptions in this video. There has always been a fifty to one hundred year cycle where the lake either gets very low, or it gets very high. Either extreme always gets us a sky is falling mentality from the establishment. When I was a kid in the 1970s, there was a drought and the thought was the lake would dry up and Antelope Island we become a permanent peninsula. Then in the 1980s the lake became so high there was flooding everywhere. The state spent many millions of dollars building massive pumps and canals to pump the water into the west desert. By the time they finished the pumps, the lake was receding so fast that they weren't even needed. Now the pumps are so corroded, they are useless. The entire region is called the great basin because it is a giant basin and the great Salt Lake is the bottom of the basin. Unlike most places in the world, there are are no rivers that flow out of this region and into the ocean. Everything that flows into the Great Salt Lake, leaves only by evaporation. Even if you divert water for other use The water isn't leaving the great basin, it is still there. It is not going anywhere. When you divert water to residential households, a large portion of the water is flushed back into the sewers and treatment plants discharge that water into the lake. As for water that is diverted for agriculture and yards, It either soaks into the ground and feeds underground aquifers, or it evaporates. Sooner or later, many of those aquifers will find themselves flowing back into the lake. I am not saying that having lots of people around doesn't affect lake levels, but even if you removed all the people, the lake would still be low, because of the drought. The real reason is the one that is practically forbidden from even being mentioned. This is a godless, wicked people that bans even the very thought of God. Yet God truly is in control of everything.

Nah just put more water in golf courses

I visited Salt lake in summer 2019. What I saw was shocking. The water level is so low. the river bank is so long and so wide. It doesn't look any better when you see it from airplane. It actually looks worse.

I wish we didn’t only care about these issues in economic terms, and in fact it’s about time we acknowledged that Utah’s and the west’s water crises are due to economic activity. The profit motive was never sustainable.

Interestingly, 60 years ago the lake was at nearly the same level it is today. 20 years later- where this video begins- it was at the all-time high. A much more accurate animation (link below) shows the cycles of drought that this region experiences, and the corresponding impact on the lake.

We all have to brace ourselves. There are so many interconnections globally that will not only cost economic losses but human and animal losses. I personally have no idea how we can turn this around quickly. But I think we all need to take action via responsibility through what and how we consume. Every thing we buy, every bite we take has an impact. There are many answers, but each of us can start with thinking about our personal consumption and boycotting en masse the luxuries. That does mean sacrifice. I am willing and trying every day but I am just one. And hey, look, we all got used to convenience. We grew up like this. What will we teach our children?

Honestly so disappointed that absolutely nothing is being done

Good news, 7 months later the Great Salt Lake has risen 4.2' with a couple feet more expected by end of run off. Utah Drought status has drop all the way down to 19% of the state and continues to decline. For those quoting that agriculture uses 80% of Utah's water, they have misunderstood. The 80% refers to the portion of Human consumption water, not the total yield. Agriculture only averages 38% of total water yield. This year because of high snow pack, GSL basin agriculture should be as low as 16% depletion.

dam 34 years 😳 imagine 200 years in the future natural climate shift is a beeech

Let's get the numbers right, expanding population is dwarfed by agriculture water use at 82% (2019 Utah Foundation Repot) and 85-90% of that is for animal agriculture (USDA). I have a recent video on this if anyone doubts the numbers or sources. Farming animals and growing their feed in the Utah desert is the primary driver for carcinogenic dust storms (trapped by the inversion) over 1.7 million people's homes in the coming years...current legislation is not enough.

Duh, quit allowing additional water diversions. And look to revoke previously approved water diversions. If this means buying out farmers, that would be a good use of funds. Never understood why it is thought by some that farming in a desert, with limited water, was a good idea. As the old saying goes, just because you can doesn't mean you should.

If you the lake effect snow coming from the Great Salt Lake it woun't just be skiing thats endangered, it will be drinking water thats in short supply.

It's people ignore the fact that overpopulation is a huge part of the problem people are using and diverting to much water from the ecosystem add a hotter climate and drought cycle. It's only going to get worse people need to start accepting what's coming and it was probably inevitable

overpopulation

A cold northwest flow has much more to do with big dumps in the Wasatch than lake effect.

Dust mitigation? Can there be a video on that?