Yesterday evening, while out for a walk, I noticed a wall of dust over the western Salt Lake Valley.
After returning home, I took a look at a video from the west-facing camera my department operates at the University of Utah and it showed a remarkable plume originating to the north and presumably from the exposed Great Salt Lake bed in what used to be Farmington Bay.
Video from @UUtah @UofUATMOS showing considerable dust blowing into Salt Lake Valley apparently from exposed Great Salt Lake bed pic.twitter.com/paL8HoHTwd
— Jim Steenburgh (@ProfessorPowder) May 18, 2023
Much has been made about the snowpack, runoff, and rise of the lake. Indeed, the lake elevation at Saltair Boat Harbor has increased over 4 feet from its record low last fall. It currently sits at about 4193.3 feet, but that is still remarkably low as can be seen by the elevation graph below for the past 40 years.
As a result, the lake area remains low and lake-bed is still exposed in many areas, including much of Farmington Bay (east of Antelope Island) which I suspect was the source of yesterday evening's dust (image below from May 15).
About a month ago, it was anticipated that the lake would eventually rise to 4195 feet with this year's runoff. That's a big increase, but it is still below what is viewed as the optimal lake zone between 4198 and 4205 feet.
I hear a lot of doom and gloom about toxic arsenic clouds from the lake bed eventually making SLC uninhabitable. This always strikes me as an unlikely outcome. Isn’t a huge chunk of western Utah already a dry lake bed? Aren’t there massive quantities of dust all over southern Utah? I’m not familiar with the contents of the lake or the actual arsenic levels, but Utah is already quite dusty and arsenic is quite common in nature and groundwater. I would love to see a reasoned analysis on what is likely to happen if the lake actually disappears.
ReplyDeleteLove the I don't think it is going to happen so it probably wont line of thinking in play here.
DeleteThe USGS has dust monitoring stations across the salt lake metro area and looks at the chemistry of the dust to get an idea of where its coming from, how much is coming each year, if its getting worse, what the chemical content of the dust is, and what the health impacts will be over time.
DeleteTo your points about southern utah, the dust in the Great Salt Lake is different than other dry lake beds because 1. it doesn't have to be a dry lake bed and it wasn't a dry lakebed when the city developed, so the impacts will be concentrated on a huge number of people compared to rural southern utah. 2. Heavy industry along the Jordan river in Utah and Salt Lake Counties have released large quantities of heavy metals and other pollutants that don't exist in the river systems of rural southern utah. We don't know exactly how those chemicals and metals have concentrated themselves in the bottom of the lake, so its hard to model or predict what those impacts will be as larger portions of the lake bed is exposed. 3. The Great Salt Lake is the size of Delaware, its normally filled with water, the dry lakes of southern utah and nevada have been seasonally dry for hundreds or thousands of years but the Great Salt Lake has had water for most of the time since the last ice age. Who knows what those impacts will be like.
I see little difference from the “I think we’re all going to die so it’s probably true” line of thinking. One would think the chemical content of the bed of a shallow lake should be easily measurable by interested parties.
DeleteMy perspective is from someone who recently moved to Utah from out state. This place is already very dusty during the summer relative to the east coast. Western Utah is an enormous dust bowl, so to some extent we seem to already be living through the dust apocalypse that people are ranting about. I’m just curious how much a dry GSL will add to what we are already experiencing, but people seem to get irritated by the question and can’t point to a reasoned analysis on the issue.
This is my two bits, I think more should be done about the Kennecott Copper Mine and the tailing ponds near the great salt lake which are an extremely environmentally hazard. Every time the wind picks it’s like a dust storm near the tailing ponds. The Kennecott is currently trying to cover the toxic dirt/dust with fill dirt. But it still won’t fix the problems with the dust going into the atmosphere and the lake.
ReplyDelete