The Great Salt Lake, We All Want More, but Don't Look Back
July 11, 2022 6:09 AM   Subscribe

Salt Lake City Confronts a Future Without a Lake - "In July 2021, the Great Salt Lake reached its lowest level since measurements began in 1875. The lake's surface area has shrunk to about 950 square miles, according to the US Geological Survey, less than a third of the 3,300 recorded in 1987. This week, the record was broken again."[1,2] (previously)
Perhaps most alarmingly, Salt Lake City will soon not have enough water to support its population: Demand is set to exceed supply in 2040. Utah is the fastest-growing state in the US, and the capital region’s population is projected to increase almost 50% by 2060, adding another 2.2 million people. The contraction of the Great Salt Lake, which provides up to 8% of the precipitation on the surrounding mountain ranges that feed into the area’s rivers, will cut water supply further.

Part of the problem, critics say, is the city’s profligate thirst, and the policies behind it. A state audit in 2015 found that Utah has the highest water use in the US, at 248 gallons per capita, and Salt Lake City charges less for water than all but one of the 30 major US cities surveyed, including desert cities such as Phoenix (which charges 30% more), Las Vegas (36% more), and Santa Fe (82% more). Some local regulations encouraged heavy water consumption, like the city ordinance that required 50% of yards to be covered with “turf, perennial or low growing shrub vegetation” — a figure that has since been reduced to 33%...

More broadly, the approach to water rights across Utah, where agriculture makes up to 80% of water use, has also come under question. Until this year, under Utah water law, those who own a right or a share had to use their entire annual allocation or it could go to someone else. Such “use it or lose it” clauses in local regulations were once common in the Southwest. A new state regulation, H.B. 33, means farmers can leave some water in streams without losing their allotted amount. But critics say much policy remains outdated. “These past water rights were established in the 1800s in a pre-climate-changed environment,” says Joanna Endter-Wada, a professor of natural resource policy and social science at Utah State University. “They should be modernized.”[3,4]
"Long drives in Texas, ranches in Wyoming, cattle towns in Kansas, feedlots in Illinois: all became linked in a new animal landscape that was governed as much by economics as by ecology. Considered abstractly, it was a landscape in which the logic of capital had remade first nature and bound together far-flung places to produce a profound new integration of biological space and market time." – William Cronon, Nature's Metropolis
also btw...
  • Sucking Dry an African Giant - "Lake Chad has literally gone from being an oasis in the desert, to being just desert. Spanning the countries of Chad, Nigeria, Niger and Cameroon and bordering the Sahara desert, Lake Chad has contracted by a massive 95% between 1963 and 2001." (previously)
  • Lake Chad: The World's Most Complex Humanitarian Disaster - "Boko Haram, climate change, predatory armies, and extreme hunger are converging on a marginalized population in Central Africa."
  • Lake Chad: Can the vanishing lake be saved?- "It's been shrinking fast, but could a plan to divert water to one of Africa's largest lakes stop it disappearing?"
  • A history of Lake Chad - "Since 2018, UNESCO has been working with local communities in the Lake Chad Basin to ensure the sustainable management of natural and cultural resources and to strengthen their resilience. From conducting studies for informed decision-making to restoring ecosystems, including providing assistance for the preparation of nomination dossiers for its designated sites, UNESCO has deployed its expertise, narrated here."
oh and...
-Withering drought shows Lake Mead boat graveyard
-World War II-era boat emerges from Lake Mead as water levels continue to decline
posted by kliuless (63 comments total) 32 users marked this as a favorite
 
Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty in February. The lake is ... gone. Here it is in 2012 when it was underwater. and here it is in 1970, with Smithson walking on it.
posted by chavenet at 7:05 AM on July 11, 2022 [8 favorites]


As is typical, we see Republicans refusing to address problems until they are personally affected.

Climate change? Hoax! Until suddenly it hurts them and then they care. But only enough to actually try to fix their own highly local issue. Addressing climate change on a broader scale, not happening on their watch.
posted by sotonohito at 7:31 AM on July 11, 2022 [16 favorites]


Anyone who thinks DeSantis is not running in 2024 is dreaming, Trump or no Trump. The problem is he might win.
posted by wittgenstein at 7:43 AM on July 11, 2022 [8 favorites]


Just want to say this is a terrific post. My kids will be doing a public policy research projects as part of an AP class this fall and I'm going to pass this post along to them as a potential topic, or at least as an example of what happens when diverse, conflicting interests and outdated policies collide and create a crisis. Well done, kliuless!
posted by martin q blank at 7:53 AM on July 11, 2022 [15 favorites]


But only enough to actually try to fix their own highly local issue. Addressing climate change on a broader scale, not happening on their watch.

And when they do address the problem it will be a zany scheme like diverting water from the Missouri/Mississippi River over (or through) a massive mountain range as if they just suck that resource dry without even consulting the people downstream.
posted by drstrangelove at 8:10 AM on July 11, 2022 [3 favorites]


Salt City has a nice ring to it
posted by zenon at 8:25 AM on July 11, 2022 [27 favorites]


Thanks for a great FPP, kliuless.
posted by Dashy at 9:17 AM on July 11, 2022 [1 favorite]


Salt City has a nice ring to it

Great Salt Lake City.
posted by kirkaracha at 9:20 AM on July 11, 2022 [1 favorite]


Salt Lake City charges less for water than all but one of the 30 major US cities surveyed, including desert cities such as Phoenix (which charges 30% more), Las Vegas (36% more), and Santa Fe (82% more).

That should say "including other desert cities." Salt Lake City is in the Great Basin Desert.
posted by kirkaracha at 9:26 AM on July 11, 2022 [3 favorites]


At least I can put all my pandemic KN95s to use when the arsenic dust clouds from the dried-out lakebed get whipped up. I have a tiny suburban house (with a tiny garden), and I've managed to cut my annual water consumption something like 30% by tightening up sprinklers and replacing plants/turf. I am astounded as I walk to commute how much stupid grass we have everywhere, like borders for church parking lots, between a Wendy's and a massive road, and so on. Get rid of it all. I'm confused daily why we are supposedly facing a cliff of water shortage and things like golf courses, car washes, and so much else is left to maintain the status quo. And our legislature passes a law that pays rich people to not use *as much* water. Gee, thanks. Until they fix the cost of water, nobody is going to change their habits. Just one more layer that is the 2020s shit sandwich I guess, this time with a more local flavor.
posted by msbutah at 9:28 AM on July 11, 2022 [17 favorites]


The Great Kansas Aqueduct is still a terrible idea, but has some renewed interest. Not that Kansas will willingly give the water to Arizona.

I seem to recall another such plan a few years ago, to pipe water from the Great Lakes states out to the west. Some lake-region governors seemed to be on-board with the idea. It was all being planned kind of under-the-radar, but it seemed to die when the idea finally reached the public.

I dunno if that was the actual string of events, but I kind of expect some similar such idea to rear its head in the near future, given the situation out west. That, and a great migration of people from the west into the Great Lake states. That will have severe political consequences, of course, especially in states that are barely clinging onto a blue majority, like Illinois and Michigan.
posted by Thorzdad at 9:34 AM on July 11, 2022 [2 favorites]


“We are in a drought cycle right now. I don’t anticipate that the drought cycle will last forever. I don’t know if it will last one more year or five more years or 10 more years.”

Republicans with never, ever, admit they were wrong about climate change nor take responsibility no matter how much it ends up directly affecting them. Climate change just doesn't exist. Or, it exists but it isn't caused by humans. Or, it is caused by humans but we can't do anything about it. Or, we could do something about it but China won't and that isn't fair. etc etc etc.
posted by scottatdrake at 9:37 AM on July 11, 2022 [13 favorites]


Not that Kansas will willingly give the water to Arizona.

I'm in Kansas and I can't imagine how this work, especially since the western part of our state is already grappling with water issues of its own. The previous governor floated the idea of pumping water from the Missouri River to western Kansas, ostensibly so the farmers on that arid steppe can continue to irrigate corn and cotton. But I don't think we can simply pump the Missouri dry for our own purposes given the myriad of downstream stakeholders involved.
posted by drstrangelove at 9:51 AM on July 11, 2022 [2 favorites]


I seem to recall (might have read it in Cadillac Desert? might have made it up? but I feel like I did see it somewhere) an old idea involving pumping water west from Lake Superior, and I was skeptical for a variety of reasons.
posted by Whale Oil at 9:57 AM on July 11, 2022 [1 favorite]


The amount of energy alone would make it almost an insane proposition, especially given that it would have to be pumped up and over the Rocky Mountains.
posted by drstrangelove at 10:01 AM on July 11, 2022 [2 favorites]


Someone did the math on pumping Pacific Ocean water to the GSL (another whiz bang idea), and found they'd need a dedicated nuclear powerplant to push it over the Sierras. It seems like all the money they'd dump into pipelines would be better spent paying people not to plant agriculture, desert-ifying landscaping around here, and increasing efficiency / storage options. But those aren't quick fixes that dump a lot of money into the pockets of the legislators' favorite donors, so probably not going to happen.
posted by msbutah at 10:24 AM on July 11, 2022 [7 favorites]


pumping water west from Lake Superior

Unfortunately for Utah (and other Red states that are abusing their water resources because they're run by subliterate goons with an electorate that loves to be brutalized), behold the Great Lakes Compact, specifically designed to make such pumping impossible.
posted by aramaic at 10:28 AM on July 11, 2022 [17 favorites]


If they ever try to pump water from the great lakes to the southwest, I'll buy my first and only rifle to shoot holes in it.
posted by Ickster at 10:30 AM on July 11, 2022 [17 favorites]


Utah: Life Elevated Evaporated

I have only lived in Utah for a few years - but I am incredibly sad about this, and yes that makes me part of the problem - trying to be water wise and am running about 40% under the annual water rights my house is allocated - which is a weird system with our little local water company (and which doesn’t promote efficiency below your annual allocated rights).

The flow on effect of the lake disappearing will be devastating for all sorts of reasons including health, wildlife and environmental issues, and even snow conditions here as well (less lake effect snow plus more dust resulting in quicker melt etc). Which feeds the drought cycle.

Salt Lake is a great little city - really loving it here and in Park City where I am. But holy cow does this state need to go green. Unless it really does want a Las Vegas climate.

I was going to do a post about the Cottonwoods and back country skiing, and the monorail debacle (sorry I mean Gondola) at some point if anyone is interested.
posted by inflatablekiwi at 11:13 AM on July 11, 2022 [4 favorites]


Glad that someone else mentioned Marc Reisner's Cadillac Desert; the book was last updated in 1993, and Reisner himself died in 2000, but he saw a lot of this coming from way off.
posted by Halloween Jack at 11:15 AM on July 11, 2022 [7 favorites]


Also, a little more immediate (and urgent) in terms of one state coveting another state's fresh water, there's Georgia's attempt to "correct" its border with Tennessee in order to be able to tap into the Tennessee River to address Atlanta's water shortage (previously on the blue).
posted by Halloween Jack at 11:27 AM on July 11, 2022


Green governments won't be effective if they don't put a brake on unrestricted population growth.

You put a brake on unrestricted population growth by making sure all people have adequate resources to live a full life.
posted by aniola at 11:44 AM on July 11, 2022 [16 favorites]


My fever dream is that when SLC gets awarded either the 2030, or 2034 now seemingly more likely, Winter Olympics that there is a push to get the lake back to at least 2002 games levels (sort of a “Let’s jump 10 feet for the Olympics!” type campaign). Simplistic yes - but easy enough to explain to people, and the changes required would help in the future. Fever dream though.

I am going to make it my mission to make sure any local elected official will be embarrassed if we run the games this much lower than 2002 - which was already described as a crisis. Really want to start wearing this water drop suit and following the Governor around “Time for the Chop” style, yelling “have you prayed hard enough for rain yet Governor? Why isn’t it working?”
posted by inflatablekiwi at 11:57 AM on July 11, 2022 [4 favorites]


Worth pointing out that climate change is not the only cause of water shortage in the western US, or elsewhere in the world. There simply never was enough water to support the human population that's settled in these arid regions. Just as we've been exploiting nonrenewable fossil fuels for the last 150 years at great environmental cost, so have we been exploiting nonrenewable sources of water. Water is being pulled from reservoirs and aquifers faster than it can ever be replenished, and we will run out soon. Poorly regulated overexploitation is certainly a major issue, but even with better management, there's just too much demand for the supply. Much of the American West is going to have to move elsewhere within the next 100 years.
posted by biogeo at 12:06 PM on July 11, 2022 [20 favorites]


Also Utah Sucks Don’t Move Here.

Which can be quite gatekeepery, and the “locals only” vibe isn’t great. But…..
posted by inflatablekiwi at 12:22 PM on July 11, 2022


 inflatablekiwi , I'd be very interested to read that. You may already know of similar schemes mooted for southern NZ, and they always involve transfer of public funds, and land, to corporations.

We have a host of unadressed water, water rights and climate changes issues here too none of which are being addressed in ways that make any sense outside of funding very large corporations. Even farmers are getting short shift.
posted by unearthed at 12:27 PM on July 11, 2022 [1 favorite]


Climate change is a global issue that won't be addressed by keeping brown people from entering any particular country.
posted by LionIndex at 12:30 PM on July 11, 2022 [7 favorites]


I think my favorite joke going around a la Giant Meteor 2020 is "Bring Back Lake Bonneville" which would definitely solve a lot of my problems all at once...
posted by msbutah at 12:45 PM on July 11, 2022 [3 favorites]


Bring back the Western Interior Seaway!
posted by thatwhichfalls at 1:18 PM on July 11, 2022 [5 favorites]


There's really no need to bring up immigration when the actual problem is literally spelled out in the FPP:
Part of the problem, critics say, is the city’s profligate thirst, and the policies behind it. A state audit in 2015 found that Utah has the highest water use in the US, at 248 gallons per capita, and Salt Lake City charges less for water than all but one of the 30 major US cities surveyed, including desert cities such as Phoenix (which charges 30% more), Las Vegas (36% more), and Santa Fe (82% more). Some local regulations encouraged heavy water consumption, like the city ordinance that required 50% of yards to be covered with “turf, perennial or low growing shrub vegetation” — a figure that has since been reduced to 33%...
"Immigrants" (Be Afraid!!!!) are not the people demanding that the desert be covered in turf. That is the white people who colonized the area 150 years ago from the Eastern US and are obsessed with making the desert look like suburban New Jersey.

As always, blame for most environmental problems, including climate change, can be squarely laid on the wealthiest of us on the planet who are using far far more than a sustainable share of the resources available to our species, often for very useful purposes like lawns in the desert and driving a bigger car than their neighbors.
posted by hydropsyche at 1:45 PM on July 11, 2022 [25 favorites]


The NY Times has been led all the way around the big, mercury elephant, substituting arsenic as the threat to health crom the shrinking Great Salt Lake. I am sure trainloads of methylized mercury were dumped deep under Mojave at Rio Tinto's borax mine site and probably deeeep under the San Joachin 17,000 feet deep, I was told, fracking brine. . They also don't like to talk about the DU out on the desert to the west from years of testing Cruise missiles.

Great Salt Lake is largely privately owned and demineralized for profit, with little care what the lake concentration or depth, ends up being. I have written and written about this, photographed for Friends Of Great Salt Lake, and rabid capitalism, couped with religious pressure put on LDS youth to have at least 4 children per family, dooms the whole enterprise, plus hedge funds, plus Lithium, plus Thorium. The brine shrimpers can't compete with the Railroad, the mineral harvesters, the water thieves north of Snowville, on the Bear River, and The Malad River.

Agriculture uses much less water than people in houses. I was writing about that as they were tearing out sour cherry orchards to make way for housing up on the Fruitway. Utah water managers have always made miracles but they can't compete with the dream.

I met one farmer who had 150 acres in beets on the margins of the lake, he sold half of that and made sudden millions. So instead of food growing in Syracuse, Utah, and the best tomatoes on earth, along the lake, there are huge houses and golf courses, and people who buy food from elsewhere, while watering like crazy, months on end.

If it gets too bad Utah will just move the capitol, and let the libs in the Salt Lake Valley suffer. Lake effect rain in summer cleans the air and cools the Wasatch after the first August thunderstorms. Lake effect snow, fills the resorts and replenishes the lake itsself. The lake is chopped all up with dikes, and some margins are saved like The Bear River Bird Refuge, where you can really experience the primitive wetlands which used to surround the lake, and now are vanishing with garbage dumps and military installations, railroad spurs on dikes which block the natural osmosis of the lake edges, leaving a sulferous stench muck land, frightening in it's mix of secret ingredients. I once told a neuro scientist who lived in my building up on the Avenues, I had finally gone swimming in the lake. She was blatantly horrified, asking if I had worn earplugs to protect myself. They have created a monster. The lake has a smell, yes, but some areas are absolutely fetid. They have stolen from them selves.

Then there is the Lithium from rich sources in Box Elder County, that drain into the Lake. Gary Herber straight up offed the top foot of the lake to Compass Minerals, a few years back. There has been much effort to make a minimun acceptible lake level, that is binding to all who would take any liquid resource from the lake, or divert it's natural due. Of course that didn't ever get any traction. Nope. Meanwhile Compass Mi erals writes eco-humanity friendly headers on it's corporate web site.
posted by Oyéah at 1:56 PM on July 11, 2022 [19 favorites]


"Bring Back Lake Bonneville"

There was a very serious proposal in the 1960s and early 1970s called NAWAPA (North America Water Power Alliance)

"The original NAWAPA Plan was drawn up by the Pasadena-based firm of Ralph M. Parsons Co. in 1964, and had a favorable review by Congress for completion in the 1990s. The plan—thankfully never completed—was drafted by the US Army Corps of Engineers and entailed the southward diversion of a portion (if not all) of the Mackenzie and Yukon rivers in northern Canada and Alaska, now flowing into the Arctic Ocean as well as the Peace, Liard and other rivers flowing into the Pacific by creating massive dams in the north. This would cause the rivers to flow backwards into the mountains to form vast reservoirs that would flood one-tenth of British Columbia. The water would be channeled south through the 800-km Rocky Mountain Trench Reservoir into the Northern USA, and from there along various routes into the dry regions of the South, to California and reaching as far as Mexico."

(Note: the Yukon River is actually Pacific drainage into southern Bering Strait, while the Peace and Liard are Arctic drainage via Mackenzie system.

These kinds of mega-geoengineering projects are never the answer.
posted by Rumple at 2:00 PM on July 11, 2022 [4 favorites]


I'm really curious about the arsenic clouds which are apparently going to be a real thing when the lake dries up.

Reminds me of the methane gas about to be released into the atmosphere in tundras like Greenland and Siberia...

All a hoax, people! Roll coal! /s
posted by Chuffy at 2:31 PM on July 11, 2022 [2 favorites]


If your kids start eating blackboard chalk it might be a sign of arsenic, heavy metals, or salts poisoning. Supposedly this was the case for kids in the late era Soviet Union around the Aral Sea, though I can't see any rigorous accounts of this.
posted by Rumple at 2:44 PM on July 11, 2022


As always, blame for most environmental problems, including climate change, can be squarely laid on the wealthiest of us

This being Utah, we can also blame Mormons.
posted by box at 3:06 PM on July 11, 2022


Agriculture uses much less water than people in houses.

Per acre I'm sure that's true, but the first article notes that 80% of the water usage in Utah goes to agriculture. Industrial usage of water is also typically much higher than residential usage, so I'd guess that residential water usage probably accounts for less than 10% state-wide. Of course, that's for the whole state, and I'm sure the residential usage of the Salt Lake City area has a comparatively greater impact on the water table in the Salt Lake basin. Nevertheless, while it's certainly true that policies encouraging wasteful usage at the residential level have a negative environmental impact and desperately need to be revised, the vast majority of the water depletion in the ecosystem seems to be attributable to agricultural uses that probably should never have been permitted in that environment in the first place.
posted by biogeo at 3:12 PM on July 11, 2022 [10 favorites]


Just bring in a few icebergs on giant flatbeds
posted by gottabefunky at 3:21 PM on July 11, 2022 [2 favorites]


Alternate title: This Is No Longer the Place
posted by gottabefunky at 3:22 PM on July 11, 2022 [4 favorites]


More broadly, the approach to water rights across Utah, where agriculture makes up to 80% of water use, has also come under question.

This argument is often made in support of taking water from the farms and ranches to grow more subdivisions irresponsibly, presumably on agricultural land. The other problem is that they don't compare because we don't eat people, but feed people, and agriculture is a major export that only increases as land and water shortages arise everywhere else. Best to conserve and incentivize it, which really hasn't been done right in the region.
posted by Brian B. at 4:09 PM on July 11, 2022


>248 gallons per capita

I used 43 gallons/day in my last billing cycle with zero effort at efficiency other than not wasting it on landscaping etc. I am rather cavalier about how thoroughly I wash dishes tho so that's could count for some conservation I guess.
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 4:19 PM on July 11, 2022


I think the 248 includes per capita share of residential, municipal, and industrial usage etc, not just household. But its still very high.

My Utah water company gives me water rights as a property owner to almost 150,000 gallons a year (so about 410 gallons a day). As best I can tell I get charged the same (within a few dollars each month for the pumping surcharge) monthly regardless of how much I use as long as I don't go over 150,000 gallons a year. Doing the math on the pumping surcharge ($1.16 per 1000 gallons) - I could forgo 50% of my water rights (75k gallons) and only save $87 a year. So the incentive to being efficient is negligible. Other than….you know…enjoying having a liveable planet.

The way some of our neighbors water lawns I suspect they treat the 150k gallons as a target to achieve. Can’t leave any water on the table…..or indeed in it.
posted by inflatablekiwi at 6:13 PM on July 11, 2022 [7 favorites]


Such a bummer. The Great Salt Lake is a thing. A shame the capitalism/republicans are destroying it.
posted by Windopaene at 6:35 PM on July 11, 2022 [2 favorites]


Hi, it's your friendly farmer chiming in here to talk about water usage in agriculture.

A quick look at Utah's agricultural output shows that the vast majority of crops grown in Utah are hay, wheat and corn with cherries coming in as a distant fourth. Of the first three crops, hay and corn are only feed crops. That means they are not eaten by humans, but instead go to feed the animals eaten by humans.
(source USDA: https://www.nass.usda.gov/Quick_Stats/Ag_Overview/stateOverview.php?state=UTAH)

I am not a vegan, or even a vegetarian, but it is worth keeping in mind that a lot of agricultural water usage is quite wasteful in this sense. The US could feed 800 million people with the grain we feed to animals.
(source: https://news.cornell.edu/stories/1997/08/us-could-feed-800-million-people-grain-livestock-eat)

I live in the similarly parched state of California, and as a farmer, I see a lot of really wasteful water usage in my sector. Before we start telling people to stop showering or washing their cars, I think we need to take a long hard look at how and where most of that water is going.
posted by birdsongster at 6:35 PM on July 11, 2022 [27 favorites]


Before we start telling people to stop showering or washing their cars, I think we need to take a long hard look at how and where most of that water is going.

If we're going to switch out the hay for grain to feed 800 million, whether it be a future growth population or an existing starving one, and assuming no worries about alfalfa in crop rotation, how does that exclude the blasting long showers and car washing as also being solutions? (I coughed at cars because over a third of corn makes ethanol, and this could be labeled a complete waste for autos, but then so is washing them each week).
posted by Brian B. at 10:19 PM on July 11, 2022


A Visit to the NSA's Data Center in Utah
The city also cut the NSA an extremely generous deal for its water rates back in 2011, a decision that, at least on a national stage, proved pretty unpopular in 2014. At that time, much ado was made of the 1.7 million gallons of water the NSA reportedly used on a daily basis in the midst of a statewide drought, as well as an attempt in the state legislature to restrict the data center's access to water. There was considerably less national coverage when the proposed legislation failed a few months later, and there wasn’t much context provided at the time as to how that drought happened in the first place. At the time that the NSA Data Center opened, Utah was among the states with the highest water usage per capita.
posted by Catblack at 1:31 PM on July 12, 2022 [1 favorite]


how does that exclude the blasting long showers and car washing as also being solutions?

Because the amount of water you'd save is not that big compared to agricultural use, and it would take a significant public-relations effort (and probably create a lot of anger) to implement and enforce. It's far from being the low-hanging fruit on the tree.

Unless the intent is to intentionally piss people off about the sweetheart deals that ag and industry get on water. In that case, telling people they need to "if it's yellow, let it mellow" in between Space Shuttle showers and driving their rusted-out cars, might cause them to take a sudden interest in the price others are paying for water, and what they're doing with all of it.

But there's only so much savings you can get from domestic usage, and for the effort it's a much harder squeeze than going after industry and agriculture, who must in the long run be incentivized to make their processes less water-intensive, and where that's not possible to move water-intensive processes to areas where water is plentiful. That's absolutely going to happen sooner or later, we can either try to do it gracefully now, or wait until the water runs out and shit gets really unpleasant, and the invisible hand does it for us.
posted by Kadin2048 at 4:06 PM on July 12, 2022 [8 favorites]


Thanks for that Kadin2048

What I forgot to include in my comment above is, something like 70-80% of water usage in Utah, California and other western states goes towards agriculture. I cannot speak to the details in Utah, but in California some simple steps would go far in reducing water usage.

Some ideas are, switch from flood and overhead watering to drip irrigation, cover the water canals (preferably in solar panels), and stop growing almonds in the desert. Seriously, knock it off.
posted by birdsongster at 4:41 PM on July 12, 2022 [1 favorite]


@birdsongster: I switched from almond milk to oat milk, because of almond's water usage.
posted by DetriusXii at 5:19 PM on July 12, 2022 [2 favorites]


SLC and neighborhood is going to have a giant problem on their hands when this ruins their ski industry.
posted by counterfeitfake at 6:43 PM on July 12, 2022


Because the amount of water you'd save is not that big compared to agricultural use, and it would take a significant public-relations effort (and probably create a lot of anger) to implement and enforce. It's far from being the low-hanging fruit on the tree.

A drought hits everyone. If agriculture water is not needed, it should be put back into the streams that feed the Salt Lake directly, and enact conservation to let that stream water go in without a corrupt developer grabbing it first. The low hanging fruit was always grass lawns (about 75% of municipal water usage is outdoors). That's a common consensus, and likely the current shift in tastes. Suburbia also has freeway problems and low density for the demand for housing, so water is only the immediate problem. But my question directly related to the red herring of changing our diets and farm economy to AVOID conservation, basically appealing to our waste to justify our waste. The bottom line is that not everyone is sold on sprawling growth, nor assume it is out of their control, and many believe it will create much bigger problems and that developers are still in charge. So let water cost them as much as their wasted grass real estate requires. We can't eat their lawn, but the subsidy of agricultural water sounds like a better deal for everyone as food goes, especially in the future, like saving for a rainy day.
posted by Brian B. at 6:52 PM on July 12, 2022 [2 favorites]


Water thrifty Salt Lakers had to put up with the harrumph effect when they tried xeriscaping. In the beginning and maybe still elsewhere entities and residents had to put in a certain amount of grass, especially in the parking strips.

I had a front row seat to the peach and cherry orchard conversion to housing. People could get carm use acre feet of water if they kept just eight fruit trees. I used to volunteer for the Utah's Own project, signing up farmers and producers, and was a paid photographer for the dept of ag there.
posted by Oyéah at 9:47 AM on July 13, 2022 [2 favorites]


@birdsongster: I switched from almond milk to oat milk, because of almond's water usage.

I quit a job for the same reason. The owners of the largest privately owned almond farms in California also own a tech business in Australia that books florist purchases. I was employed to write generalist seo copy at minimum wage. Some young company apparatchiks arrived from the States to boast about the size of the company which is owned by an elderly greedy wealthy couple. I could not, in good conscience, keep working for them. I judge anyone who uses almond milk when they know the water costs.
posted by Thella at 3:07 AM on July 14, 2022 [3 favorites]


It should be noted that almonds use about the same water as walnuts, pistachios and other nuts, because it takes more water to produce that meager protein compared to other crops. Oranges take almost as much water and people get sweet juice that might be considered a risky option or dessert to some dietitians. Almonds are native to Iran, by way of Morocco and Spain, and if we needed them for any reason, such as balancing a trade ledger with China due to the billions spent on plastic items and toys each year, then they grow best in California with drip irrigation. I have zero love for almonds, though I am concerned about perspective, which all goes back to population acceleration. The major sins have already been committed, such as diverting rivers and streams with native species and exterminating beavers and muskrats, their ponds needed for ground water maintenance, aquatic animals, birds and local climate. Here is a hit list, but keep in mind that many things go in favor of trees, such as water transpiration into the surrounding air through leaves, shade, and often valuable byproduct like almond hulls for animal feed. Cows are the worst but some make dairy, and manure for water-loving hay often fixes nitrogen in fields for future crops. Some cows live on grasslands, not fattened in rain forests or Arizona feedlots where they buy the water. Lists can be reordered depending on the values we are assessing. And there are thirsty industries waiting to take what we don't use or protect.
posted by Brian B. at 7:47 AM on July 14, 2022 [1 favorite]


Water is for almonds, nuts, tomatoes, spinach, cherries and the like. Water is for all the things it is for.
posted by Oyéah at 11:07 AM on July 14, 2022 [1 favorite]


Here's a Vice video about the desert community of St George, Utah, sucking up water for their unnecessary golf courses and lawns. John Oliver did a piece on them too.

So many goddamn problems arise from the willful, selfish blindness of conservative culture.
posted by ishmael at 11:22 AM on July 14, 2022 [2 favorites]


Pets too.
posted by Brian B. at 11:37 AM on July 14, 2022 [1 favorite]


Doug Muder at the Weekly Sift wrote a nice pithy summary of the Great Salt Lake situation.
[quoting the NYT] "The salt content in the part of the lake closest to Salt Lake City used to fluctuate between 9-12%, according to Bonnie Baxter, a biology professor at Westminster College. But as the water in the lake drops, its salt content has increased. If it reaches 17% — something Baxter says will happen this summer — the algae in the water will struggle, threatening the brine shrimp that consume it."

Algae and brine shrimp are the bottom of a food chain. Migratory birds who rely on the lake as a resting spot in their otherwise perilous desert crossing would go next.

"While the ecosystem hasn’t collapsed yet, Baxter said, 'we’re at the precipice. It’s terrifying.'"
[...]
The factors that make it hard to marshal the will to fight climate change globally don’t apply here. The retreat of the Great Salt Lake is a visible local problem that could spiral into disaster in the very near future. Action to prevent that disaster could be taken locally, by restricting water usage and new development. [...] If it’s not politically feasible to restrict water usage and curb development, the whole region is, as Grant Piper puts it, sleepwalking towards disaster.
The FPP mentions that Lake Meade and Lake Chad are also disappearing. Muder mentions the Aral Sea, which already almost completely disappeared.
[It was] once the fourth-largest inland body of water in the world. In the 1960s, the Soviet Union irrigated much of the surrounding area in an attempt to become a major cotton exporter. With so much water evaporating in fields rather than flowing into the sea, the Aral’s ecosystem collapsed.
He quotes Paul Krugman's description: "What was once the bottom of the lake has become a new desert, abandoned fishing boats listing in the sand, scoured by toxic dust storms. Ramshackle towns perch on vanished shorelines, while the population languishes in poverty and high rates of cancer, tuberculosis, digestive disorders and anemia. It’s like a scene from a post-apocalyptic movie, yet it is all too depressingly real."
posted by OnceUponATime at 2:23 PM on July 15, 2022 [4 favorites]


It kinda seems like "conservativism" is just another name for the belief that "bad things can't happen to good people" AKA "the Just World fallacy." AKA "It can't happen here!" AKA "I never thought it would happen to ME!"
posted by OnceUponATime at 2:24 PM on July 15, 2022 [1 favorite]


(You might not want to listen to an ambient album about the Aral Sea, but, I mean, you could.)
posted by box at 2:55 PM on July 15, 2022


Part of the problem is many people in Utah view irrigation as a religious calling. Even if you accept the tenets of Mormon theology, this thinking is flawed but since when has pointing out flawed thinking stopped anyone? The loss of the Great Salt Lake and the damage that entails is something Utahns will likely have to learn the hard way.
posted by Big Al 8000 at 10:44 AM on July 17, 2022


I live about forty miles south of the lake and hope the clouds of arsenic-filled dust don't reach us. We just visited Great Basin National Park which is wonderful, but while there read this:

The hydrographic Great Basin is a 209,162-square-mile (541,730 km2) area that once drained internally. All precipitation in the region evaporated, sunk underground or flowed into lakes (mostly saline). However, since the advent of the Los Angeles Aqueduct, for over a century a large portion of water has been transported out of the area, leaving the landscape permanently altered.

If this country fractures into separate fiefdoms, I wonder if these water-exporting agreements will be revisited, and if that will mean the end of desert communities such as Las Vegas and Los Angeles.

There is a long history of violence associated with water rights in the west. If the state starts to curb those rights (which they won't, because they are imprisoned by bad ideology), it is going to make the Bundy occupation of the Malhuer Wildlife Refuge look like a Sunday picnic. At some point silly libertarian cowboy cosplay turns into something real. Clownish can militias turn into actual militias.

Disclaimer: I am kind of anxiety-surfing, and speak with no authority or expertise.

“Thanks to the centrifugal pump, places like Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas had thrown on the garments of fertility for a century, pretending to greenery and growth as they mined glacial water from ten-thousand-year-old aquifers. They'd played dress-up-in-green and pretended it could last forever. They'd pumped up the Ice Age and spread it across the land, and for a while they'd turned their dry lands lush. Cotton, wheat, corn, soybeans -- vast green acreages, all because someone could get a pump going. Those places had dreamed of being different from what they were. They'd had aspirations. And then the water ran out, and they fell back, realizing too late that their prosperity was borrowed, and there would be no more coming.”
― Paolo Bacigalupi, The Water Knife

Saudi Arabia did the same thing with their ground water, converting much of it to exported grain.
posted by mecran01 at 11:30 AM on July 27, 2022 [1 favorite]


A few clarifications might be useful there

However, since the advent of the Los Angeles Aqueduct, for over a century a large portion of water has been transported out of the area, leaving the landscape permanently altered.

This muddies the picture by letting us infer that all the water is leaving the Great Basin through the LA aqueduct. However, I suspect that a lot of the water that they're talking about is being exported to irrigation and cities in Utah & Nevada--not California. Also, the Great Basin water that is exported to LA comes from Mono Lake and Owens Lake, which are in California--not Utah or Nevada.

Your scenario makes more sense if we consider what happens if California loses access to the Colorado River water (by definition, not part of the Great Basin). I think if the shit hits the fan, then southern California may have to lose some population, but it doesn't "end" by a long shot. There is still the water from the Central Valley and local water. Also, I think a lot of agriculture would be lost before the cities give up much water.

Moreover, suppose that Nevada declares itself part of the United States of Jefferson, and it's going to suck all the water out of the river before California gets any. Well, vegetables grow a lot better in the low elevation Imperial Valley than they do in high-elevation Nevada. And California climate will still attract more people than Las Vegas or Phoenix. Ultimately, I think a lot of the water will still go to the highest bidder.

Alternatively, if they're really going to go to war over it, then California can certainly pay for a better army than Nevada.
posted by polecat at 3:05 PM on July 27, 2022


Great Basin

John Wesley Powell's predictions
posted by Brian B. at 8:33 PM on July 27, 2022 [1 favorite]


« Older No such thing?   |   vagonWeb Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments