Robert Rees’s guest column (July 13) reminds us that seagulls helped rescue our pioneer forefathers from locusts and famine. He notes, ironically, that we are now killing the Great Salt Lake — the ecosystem on which the seagulls depend — by hijacking the water that keeps it alive.
The Wasatch Front is heading for the same public health calamity that now plagues those who reside near two other major lakes that heedless human choices destroyed — Kazakhstan’s Aral Sea and California’s Lake Owen. Both lakes have been replaced by salt and dust. Among the 35 million people who live near the Aral Sea lakebed, rates of asthma, cancer and other diseases have risen dramatically as they inhale its toxin-laden dust. Toxic dust from Lake Owens’ exposed lakebed is now the largest single source of air pollution in the United States. Soon, that distinction will go to the much larger Great Salt Lakebed (formerly the Great Salt Lake.)
As the Rees commentary notes, our lake will die if we continue to divert inflowing water at current rates. The resulting toxic dust storms will cost the residents of the Wasatch Front two years of their lives. Allowing our lake to die will also reduce Utah’s GDP by $2.5 billion.
Growing hay to feed livestock consumes 2/3 of the fresh water diverted from the Great Salt Lake, but contributes a paltry $0.2% to the State’s annual GDP. Why not save two years of our lives and protect several billion dollars of GDP by simply paying our farmers the difference between growing their own hay to feed their livestock and importing hay grown in regions where water is plentiful? The cost of such a program would be pennies on the dollar, even without counting the enormous benefits to public health.
Malin Moench
Holladay