BLOG
To Save the Great Salt Lake, Farmers Will Have to Grow Less Alfalfa
January 11th, 2025
Via Inside Climate News, an article on new research which found that alfalfa uses the vast majority of agricultural water that would otherwise replenish the largest saline lake in the nation: The Great Salt Lake is shrinking, and new research published Tuesday reports that saving it requires reducing the amount of farmland that is irrigated […]
Read more »Saving the Great Salt Lake by Rebalancing Its Water Budget
January 9th, 2025
Via Sustainable Waters, commentary on a new approach to save Great Salt Lake: In recent years I’ve had the great fortune to be able to work with some amazing teams of researchers to explore the causes of water scarcity across many geographies, including the Colorado River, the Rio Grande, the Western US, and around the globe. Importantly, we’ve gone […]
Read more »Hay Is Sucking Great Salt Lake Dry
January 7th, 2025
Via The Land Desk, a look at a new study which finds that cattle-feed irrigation is primary culprits in the Great Salt Lake’s shrinkage Detail from an 1852 map of the Great Salt Lake by J.W. Gunnison and Charles Preuss. As we traveled, the valley spread into an uncanny immensity unlike the other landscapes we […]
Read more »One Of The World’s Great Lakes Is Vanishing – and Leaving Toxic Dust In Its Wake
March 1st, 2024
Via The Independent, a report on the Great Salt Lake, the largest saline lake in the western hemisphere, which is at risk of disappearing in just five years: Some things are so precious, so essential for the common good, they cannot be bought or sold. They fall, instead, to the public trust, a doctrine of […]
Read more »The Race to Save the Great Salt Lake
December 15th, 2023
Via Mother Jones, a look at the race to save the Great Salt Lake: In October 2021, an increasingly dire megadrought had left Utah’s most famous lake at its lowest level in recorded history. As Great Salt Lake lay dying, Democrats introduced a modest water conservation bill requiring efficient plumbing fixtures in all new construction, […]
Read more »Could a 550-Mile Pipeline From the Ocean Save the Great Salt Lake?
December 13th, 2023
Via Smithsonian Magazine, a report on new research suggesting that the electricity costs would exceed $300 million per year and carbon dioxide emissions could approach one million metric tons annually from a proposed 550-mile pipeline to save the Great Salt Lake: A 550-mile pipeline pumping water from the Pacific Ocean to the rapidly depleting Great […]
Read more »