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It could be a blueprint for a West that is running out of water and time.
The Great Salt Lake is in trouble. After the lake’s water level reached a historic low in 2022, Utah is experiencing its worst snowpack on record. The lake is plunging toward a new low, risking the increased exposure of hundreds of square miles of lake bed contaminated with arsenic and heavy metals. When the wind blows, toxic dust blankets Salt Lake City and other towns along the Wasatch Front, one of the fastest-growing regions in one of the fastest-growing states in the country.
Across the West, water is running short. The Colorado River — a crucial lifeline for 40 million people across seven states — has been strained by drought and overallocation for decades, leaving states locked in bitter fights over what remains. Utah is caught in twin crises: securing its share of a shrinking river while racing to save the Great Salt Lake.
No country has successfully reversed the decline of a saline lake like the Great Salt Lake, which once spanned a larger area than Rhode Island. But in Utah, a deeply conservative, anti-regulation state, mandatory curtailments and regulatory seizures are political nonstarters. If the state is going to save the lake, it will have to do something unprecedented: rescue an entire ecosystem through voluntary market mechanisms instead of government mandates.
The stakes are high. More than 2.5 million people live downwind of the drying lake bed. Evaporation from the lake is responsible for nearly half of the region’s precipitation. The lake also plays an underappreciated role in the national food supply; it produces minerals that provide fertilizer for organic crops and nearly half of the world’s brine shrimp supply, supporting 10 million metric tons of seafood.
Continue reading the entire piece here at The Washington Post
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Shawn Regan is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.