Utah's Great Salt Lake Just Exposed 800 Square Miles of Lakebed—What's Underneath Shocked 2.5Million

Added: 2026-05-12

[00:00:00]The Great Salt Lake is the largest saline lake in the Western Hemisphere, or it was since 1850. The lake has lost approximately 73% of its water volume and 60% of its surface area. As of the most recent measurements from the United States Geological Survey, approximately 800 square miles of former lake bed, an area roughly equivalent to the entire surface of the Hawaiian island of Maui, has been exposed to open air for the first time in modern recorded history.

[00:00:33]That exposed seabed is not empty. It contains the cumulative chemical residue of more than a century and a half of upstream activity.

[00:00:44]mining tailings carried down by the Bear, Weber, and Jordan rivers from the copper, silver, and gold operations of the Wasatch Range.

[00:00:53]Smelter emissions from the Bingham Canyon Mine, which at one point was the largest open pit copper operation in the world, settled into the lake over decades of atmospheric deposition.

[00:01:05]agricultural runoff, urban storm water, and the slow geological accumulation of natural arsenic from the surrounding Great Basin geology.

[00:01:15]For most of the last century, those contaminants sat at the bottom of one of the largest enclosed bodies of water on the continent beneath 15 ft of brine.

[00:01:25]They are not at the bottom of the lake anymore. The lake did not just disappear. What was at the bottom of it did not disappear with it. In January of 2023, a team of 32 ecologists, atmospheric scientists, and conservation biologists led by Brigham Young University ecologist Ben Abbott released a report that mainstream coverage of the Great Salt Lake crisis has, by every measure of how the public conversation has actually unfolded, only partially absorbed. The report concluded that without an additional 326 billion gallons of water entering the lake every year, the system would continue to collapse and that the public health, agricultural, and economic consequences for the entire Wasatch front would be measured not in years but in decades of cumulative damage. In a separate ongoing research effort, KBY College biogeeochemist Rebecca Rder and colleague Bess Kaufman have received National Science Foundation funding to study how the same heavy metalladen lake bed dust is being absorbed directly by the alalfa and sweet corn crops grown across the broader western United States. That alalfa, according to the Abbott report, accounts for 74% of the water diversions that emptied the lake in the first place. The lake is gone in the parts that matter. The contamination is not. What is already in the AR of the Wasace front is the part of the story nobody is broadcasting.

[00:02:59]To understand what is happening to the Great Salt Lake and why the exposed lake bed represents a public health threat unlike anything the American West has faced in the modern era. You first have to understand what the lake actually is, how it came to exist, and what has been flowing into it for the past century and a half. The Great Salt Lake sits in the northeastern corner of the Great Basin, a vast Endorheek watershed that covers most of Nevada and portions of Utah, Oregon, Idaho, and California.

[00:03:34]Endoric means the water has no outlet to the sea. Rivers flow in, nothing flows out. The only way water leaves the system is through evaporation.

[00:03:46]The lake is a remnant of Lake Bonavville, a massive freshwater body that covered much of northwestern Utah during the last ice age. At its maximum extent, approximately 32,000 years ago, Lake Bonavville was roughly the size of Lake Michigan. It was over a,000 ft deep in places. The Bonavville salt flats where land speed records are set are the dry bed of that ancient lake. When the ice age ended, the climate warmed, precipitation patterns shifted, and Lake Bonavville began to shrink. Over thousands of years, it retreated to a fraction of its former size, leaving behind the Great Salt Lake, a shallow, salty remnant that has fluctuated in size throughout the holosene, but that has until the past several decades remained a substantial body of water.

[00:04:39]The lake has no outlet. Three major rivers feed it. The Bear River from the north, the Weber River from the east, and the Jordan River from the south.

[00:04:50]These rivers carry snow melt from the Wasatch Range, the mountain chain that runs along the eastern edge of the Salt Lake Valley. The mountains receive substantial precipitation. The rivers carry that precipitation to the lake.

[00:05:04]The lake evaporates. The system has been in rough equilibrium for thousands of years. That equilibrium has been broken.

[00:05:14]The population of the Wasatch Front, the metropolitan corridor that runs from Ogden through Salt Lake City to Provo, is approximately 2.5 million people.

[00:05:24]That population requires water. The cities, the suburbs, the industries, the lawns, the golf courses, the swimming pools, all of it requires water that would otherwise flow to the lake. But the cities are not the primary consumer.

[00:05:43]Agriculture is the Abbott report released in January 2023 documented that approximately 74% of the water diverted from the Great Salt Lakes tributaries goes to agriculture and the single largest agricultural consumer is alalfa.

[00:06:01]Alfalfa is a water inensive crop. It is grown primarily as feed for cattle and dairy operations. Utah's alfalfa production serves both local livestock and export markets with substantial quantities shipped to Asia for dairy cattle feed. The arithmetic is brutal.

[00:06:19]Water that would flow to the lake is diverted to grow alalfa. The alalfa is fed to cattle. The cattle produce milk and beef. The products are consumed or exported. The water is gone. The lake receives what is left after the diversions. What is left is not enough.

[00:06:39]The Abbott report calculated that the lake is running an annual deficit of approximately 326 billion gallons. The amount of additional water that would need to reach the lake each year to stabilize the system at a sustainable level. That deficit has been accumulating for decades. The cumulative result is a lake that has lost nearly 3/4 of its volume. In November 2022, the Great Salt Lake hit a record low of 4,188.5 ft above sea level. The healthy minimum range for the lake is generally cited as 4,198 to 4,25 ft. The lake was nearly 10 ft below the bottom of the healthy range.

[00:07:21]The consequences of that decline extend far beyond the loss of water.

[00:07:27]The lake has been collecting contaminants for over 150 years. The Wasatch range is rich in minerals.

[00:07:35]Copper, silver, gold, lead, and zinc have been extracted from the mountains since the 1860s.

[00:07:44]The mining operations that exploited those deposits produced waste, including tailings, runoff, and atmospheric emissions, which entered the watershed and flowed downstream to the lake.

[00:07:56]The Bingham Canyon Mine is the most significant single source. Located in the Aquir Mountains southwest of Salt Lake City, Bingham Canyon is one of the largest open pit copper mines in the world. It has been in operation since 1906.

[00:08:13]For over a century, the mine has produced copper, gold, silver, and malibdinum. It has also produced emissions. Smelting copper ore releases heavy metals into the atmosphere. Lead, arsenic, cadmium, and other toxic elements are carried by winds and deposited across the surrounding landscape. The Great Salt Lake sitting down wind and downstream of Bingham Canyon has been receiving those deposits for generations. The mine is currently operated by Kakott Utah copper, a subsidiary of Riotinto.

[00:08:49]The company has implemented emission controls that have reduced atmospheric releases compared to the unregulated era. But the cumulative legacy of a century of operations is already in the lake. The mining contamination is compounded by natural sources. The Great Basin has naturally elevated levels of arsenic in its groundwater and sediments.

[00:09:13]This is a consequence of the region's volcanic geology.

[00:09:17]Arsenic bearing minerals are common in the rock formations. As water moves through the system, it picks up arsenic and carries it downstream. The result is a lake bed that contains both anthropogenic and natural contaminants, a toxic mixture that was safely sequestered beneath the water for as long as the lake existed.

[00:09:39]The lake no longer exists in the places where the contamination is concentrated.

[00:09:44]Kevin Perry is a professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Utah. He has become over the past several years one of the most public scientific voices on the Great Salt Lake Crisis. He has cycled the entire perimeter of the exposed lake bed on a bicycle taking dust samples from the sediments. He has presented his findings at community forums, academic conferences, and media interviews. His measurements are alarming.

[00:10:14]Perry has documented arsenic concentrations in the exposed lake bed dust that exceed Environmental Protection Agency limits by a factor of 10. That is 10 times the level the Environmental Protection Agency considers safe for human exposure. The arsenic is not locked in place. The lake bed sediments are dry. When the wind blows and the wind blows frequently across the Salt Lake Valley, the dust becomes airborne. It travels across the Wasace front. It enters homes, schools, offices, and lungs. The population of the Wasatch Front is approximately 2.5 million people. Those people are breathing air that carries dust from an exposed lake bed contaminated with arsenic at 10 times Environmental Protection Agency limits.

[00:11:03]Perry's measurements have been confirmed by the University of Utah College of Science, which has conducted systematic research identifying what they describe as toxic dust hotspots, specific zones on the exposed lake bed where contaminant concentrations are highest and where wind erosion is most active.

[00:11:22]The hot spots are not evenly distributed. The contamination is concentrated in specific areas where historical deposition was greatest, areas that were until recently safely underwater. The wind does not discriminate. When dust from the hot spots becomes airborne, it travels wherever the atmospheric conditions carry it. The Wasatch front sits directly downwind.

[00:11:48]Brian Moench is a Salt Lake City physician and the founder and president of Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment. He has been sounding the alarm about the public health implications of the Great Salt Lake's decline for years. His warnings have intensified as the lake has continued to shrink. Moench draws a direct comparison to the Arrol Sea. The Arrol Sea was once the fourth largest lake in the world, located in what is now Usuzbekiststan and Kazakhstan.

[00:12:19]Beginning in the 1960s, Soviet central planners diverted the rivers feeding the aerrol sea to irrigate cotton fields in the surrounding desert. The diversions were massive. The rivers were essentially emptied before they could reach the lake. The result was catastrophic.

[00:12:36]The Arrol Sea lost approximately 90% of its surface area between 1960 and 2010.

[00:12:43]Fishing communities that had existed for generations found themselves stranded dozens of miles from the receding shoreline.

[00:12:51]The economy of the region collapsed, but the worst consequences were medical. The exposed seabed of the Aerrol Sea contained decades of agricultural runoff, pesticides, and salt. When the wind carried that dust across the surrounding communities, the population began to sicken. Documented health effects in the Aerrol Sea region include dramatic increases in respiratory illness, elevated rates of drugresistant tuberculosis, increased infant and child mortality, and elevated cancer rates.

[00:13:26]The communities downwind of the dry lake bed have experienced a public health catastrophe that continues to this day.

[00:13:33]Moench argues that Utah is facing the same trajectory.

[00:13:38]The Great Salt Lake is not identical to the Aerrol Sea. The contamination profiles are different. The climate is different. The population distribution is different, but the fundamental mechanism is the same. A large body of water that was collecting contaminants for decades is drying up. The contaminants are being exposed. The wind is carrying them into human lungs. The question is not whether the exposure will have health effects. The question is how severe those effects will be and how long the exposure will continue.

[00:14:14]The exposure is not unequally distributed. A 2024 study published in Science Direct documented significant racial disparities in projected exposure to particulate matter from the Great Salt Lake decline. The study analyzed PM2.5 exposure, fine particulate matter small enough to penetrate deep into the lungs across different demographic groups along the Wasace front. The results showed that Pacific Islander, Hispanic, and Black populations face disproportionately higher exposure than non-Hispanic white populations.

[00:14:53]Under very low lake level scenarios, Pacific Islander populations were projected to experience average PM2.5 exposure of approximately 28.4 micrograms per cubic meter.

[00:15:07]Non-Hispanic white populations were projected to experience approximately 26 micrograms per cubic meter. The difference may appear small in absolute terms. It is not small in health terms.

[00:15:20]PM2.5 exposure is associated with respiratory illness, cardiovascular disease, and premature death. The relationship between exposure and harm is well documented. Even modest differences in exposure sustained over years translate into significant differences in health outcomes. The communities facing the highest exposure are often those with the fewest resources to protect themselves, the least access to air filtration, the least ability to relocate, the least political power to demand remediation.

[00:15:55]The environmental justice implications are profound. The people who diverted the water to grow alalfa are not primarily the people who will suffer the consequences of the dust. The contamination is not limited to the air.

[00:16:11]Rebecca Rder is a biogeeochemist at KBY College. Bess Kaufman is a geologist at the same institution. Together they have received National Science Foundation funding to study how contaminants from the Great Salt Lake are entering food crops. The mechanism is straightforward.

[00:16:30]Dust settles on agricultural fields. It lands on plant surfaces. It accumulates in the soil. Plants absorb contaminants through their roots. The contaminants enter the food supply. Raider and Kaufman are specifically studying uptake in alalfa and sweet corn, crops grown extensively in the western United States, crops that are consumed by both livestock and humans. The irony is acute. The alalfa that consumed 74% of the water that would have kept the lake healthy is now being contaminated by the dust from the lake bed that was exposed because the water was diverted to grow the alalfa.

[00:17:10]The system is poisoning itself.

[00:17:13]The full results of the National Science Foundation funded study are still being compiled. But the research program itself is an indication of how seriously the scientific community is taking the threat. Federal funding for this kind of research is not awarded casually. The National Science Foundation does not fund investigations into hypothetical problems. The contamination of food crops is a real and present concern.

[00:17:41]Kevin Perry's research has documented another consequence of the lake bed exposure that receives less attention than the direct air quality effects, but that carries significant implications for the entire region. Dust on snow.

[00:17:57]When wind carries lake bed dust across the Wasach front, some of that dust is deposited on the snowpack of the Wasace range. The snowpack is the primary source of water for the entire region.

[00:18:08]It is the same snowpack that feeds the rivers that feed the lake that is drying up because the water is being diverted.

[00:18:15]Snow is white. White surfaces reflect sunlight. This reflectivity is called albido. Dust is dark. Dark surfaces absorb sunlight. When dust is deposited on snow, it reduces the snow's albido.

[00:18:31]Lower albido means faster melting.

[00:18:35]Perry's research conducted in 2022 documented that dust deposition from the exposed lake bed reduced the albido of the Wasatch snowpack and accelerated snow melt by approximately 1 to 3 weeks.

[00:18:49]This matters for water management.

[00:18:52]Agricultural operations depend on a predictable schedule of snow melt.

[00:18:56]Reservoirs are filled according to expected timing. Irrigation schedules are set based on when water will be available.

[00:19:05]When the snowpack melts earlier than expected, the timing is disrupted. Water arrives before the reservoirs are ready to store it. Runoff increases.

[00:19:16]Flooding risk rises. Later in the season, when the water is needed, it is not there because it already melted and flowed away. The dust on snow effect also has implications for drinking water.

[00:19:30]Salt Lake City and the surrounding communities draw their drinking water from mountain watersheds fed by snow melt. The quality and timing of that snow melt affects the treatment requirements and availability of municipal water supplies. The lakes's decline is not just a local problem. It is cascading through the entire regional water system, affecting everything from agricultural production to municipal water supply to flood control.

[00:19:58]The historical irony is almost too perfect. In the 1980s, the Great Salt Lake was not disappearing. It was flooding. The lake reached its modern high water mark from 1986 to 1987.

[00:20:15]The water levels rose high enough to threaten infrastructure, roads, and communities on the southern and eastern shores.

[00:20:22]The historic Saltier Pavilion, a resort that has existed in various iterations since 1893, was inundated.

[00:20:31]The state of Utah responded with the West Desert Pumping Project. The project, which operated from 1987 to 1989, used massive pumps to remove water from the Great Salt Lake and discharge it into the desert to the west.

[00:20:48]The state spent over $60 million to get rid of water that was threatening to flood Salt Lake City suburbs. The pumps ran for 2 years. They removed billions of gallons of water from the lake. They worked. The flooding threat was mitigated. The infrastructure was saved.

[00:21:07]The project was declared a success.

[00:21:10]Less than 40 years later, the same lake is dying of thirst. The problem has reversed entirely. The water that Utah paid $60 million to pump into the desert would be worth more than anyone can calculate if it were in the lake today.

[00:21:28]Antelopee is the largest island in the Great Salt Lake. It is home to a state park, a bison herd, and some of the most accessible wildlife viewing in the region. The island has been connected to the mainland by a causeway since 1969, allowing visitors to drive across the lake to reach it. At the lowest water levels, the causeway is unnecessary. The lake has receded so far that the lake bed itself is exposed, connecting Antelopee Island to the mainland across miles of dry sediment. The island is no longer an island. The Saltier Pavilion, rebuilt after the flooding in the 1980s, now sits stranded miles from the water's edge. The historic resort, built on the premise that visitors would come to swim and float in the buoyant salt water, overlooks a desert of exposed lake bed.

[00:22:22]The ecosystem is collapsing alongside the water level. Brine shrimp, Artamia franciscana, are the foundation of the Great Salt Lake's biological system. The tiny crustaceans thrive in saline water.

[00:22:37]They reproduce in enormous numbers. They form the base of a food web that supports millions of migratory birds.

[00:22:44]The brine shrimp industry is worth over $60 million annually. Utah's Great Salt Lake supplies a significant portion of the global brine shrimp market with eggs harvested for use in aquaculture, feeding farmed fish and shellfish around the world. As the lake shrinks, the salinity increases.

[00:23:05]Brine shrimp can tolerate high salinity, but there are limits. As the concentration of salt rises, reproduction declines. Population crashes become more frequent. The foundation of the ecosystem weakens. The birds notice. The Great Salt Lake supports approximately 10 million migratory birds annually. The lake is a critical stopover point on the Pacific Flyway, the migratory corridor that runs from Alaska to South America. Shoreirds, including fallaropies, eared greaves, and American avoids depend on the brine shrimp and brine flies of the Great Salt Lake to fuel their migrations. When the brine shrimp population crashes, the birds have nothing to eat. They cannot simply go somewhere else.

[00:23:53]The Great Salt Lake is the largest saline lake in the Western Hemisphere.

[00:23:59]There is no equivalent alternative within thousands of miles. The birds either find food at the Great Salt Lake or they do not complete their migrations. The ecosystem that evolved over thousands of years is being dismantled in decades.

[00:24:15]The Utah state government has responded.

[00:24:19]Multiple bills have been passed since 2022 to address water diversions. The Great Salt Lake Strike Team was established in 2023 as an advisory body to coordinate response efforts. Joel Ferry, the director of the Utah Department of Natural Resources, has made public statements acknowledging the severity of the situation.

[00:24:42]But the scientists who wrote the 2023 emergency report are not satisfied. Ben Abbott and his co-authors called for a 30 to 50% reduction in overall water use to stabilize the lake. The legislative responses have not come close to that level of reduction. The political obstacles are substantial. Agriculture is powerful in Utah. Water rights are legally protected. The economic interests that benefit from the current allocation system are not eager to give up their water. The result is incremental action that falls short of what the science indicates is necessary.

[00:25:18]The lake continues to decline. The lake bed continues to be exposed. The dust continues to blow.

[00:25:26]The coverage from local outlets, the Salt Lake Tribune, the Daily Yonder, and regional journalists who have been tracking the crisis for years has been more sustained and more detailed than the national coverage. The national media has largely treated the Great Salt Lake as an environmental curiosity rather than a public health emergency.

[00:25:47]Stories appear when the lake hits a new record low. They disappear when the news cycle moves on. The 2.5 million people living along the Wasatch Front do not have the luxury of moving on. They are breathing the air. They are drinking the water. They are eating the food grown in the fields where the dust is settling.

[00:26:08]The Great Salt Lake crisis is not a future problem. It is a present problem.

[00:26:13]The arsenic is already in the air. The dust is already on the snow. The contaminants are already being studied in the food supply. The health disparities are already being documented. What happens next depends on decisions that have not yet been made.

[00:26:29]The water that was diverted can be returned. If the political will exists to prioritize the lake over the alalfa, the cattle, the exports, and the economic interests that have benefited from the current system, the exposed lake bed can be stabilized if resources are committed to dust suppression, vegetation establishment, and other remediation techniques. The public health monitoring can be expanded if the state and federal governments acknowledge the scale of the threat and commit to tracking the consequences. But none of that is happening at the scale the science requires. The Abbott report was released in January 2023.

[00:27:09]The lake continues to decline. The dust continues to blow. The arsenic continues to accumulate in the lungs of 2.5 million people.

[00:27:20]The Great Salt Lake is dying. What was at the bottom of it? The cumulative contamination of 150 years of mining, agriculture, and atmospheric deposition is now at the surface. The wind is carrying it into homes, schools, offices, and bodies. The aerrol sea precedent is documented. The health consequences of that catastrophe are known. The trajectory is clear. Utah is walking the same path. The question is whether anyone with the power to change course will do so before the consequences become irreversible.

[00:27:58]The lake is not coming back on its own.

[00:28:00]The contamination is not going away on its own. The 2.5 million people downwind of the exposed lake bed cannot hold their breath until someone decides to act. The Great Salt Lake crisis is here.

[00:28:15]It is now. And what happens next will determine whether the Wasatch front becomes the American Aerrol Sea. A slow motion public health catastrophe that unfolds over decades because the people who could have stopped it chose not to.

[00:28:32]The water is gone. The contamination remains. The wind is blowing. And 2.5 million people are waiting to find out whether anyone in power is paying attention.