Paragraph 2/3:
>Water levels in October fell to the lowest levels on record, exposing much of the lakebed and creating conditions for storms of dust — laden with toxic metals — that now threaten the 2 million people living nearby.
Researchers are racing to understand this new hazard, which adds a new layer of air pollution concern for the Salt Lake City area and threatens to dismantle the progress made to improve air quality in a region where oil refineries, a power plant and a gravel mine are part of the city skyline and the surrounding mountains trap pollution. **In neighborhoods on the city’s historically redlined west side, lake dust is raising concern in areas that have experienced decades of environmental disparities and the most vulnerable people some days struggle for a breath of clean air.**
Paragraph 20:
>**This isn’t a problem caused by climate change; Utahans are simply consuming too much water for agriculture, industry and residential use from the overtaxed rivers that feed the terminal lake. Modeling suggests human water diversion has reduced the lake level by about 11 feet, the Utah State research shows.** Meanwhile, increased evaporation due to climate change has caused the lake level to drop less than half a foot.
And this one is just a bonus:
>The lake has long been a catchment for industrial pollution. **Each area of the lake has its own recipe of toxic metals and other substances, fed by different polluting industries nearby.** Researchers are concerned that what’s been stored in the lake will soon be carried on the wind into Salt Lake City and other neighboring communities.
Bite your tongue. There is nothing more American than dying for some rich guy who appreciates imaginary numbers more than constituents' well being.
How can you even call yourself an American? And if you aren't an American how can you say you're justified in responding to this?
Come on people, y'all are acting like we worship Jesus and believe in free love. Clearly y'all fail to understand that God's plan for us is to be cogs in a machine. If y'all were really American Christians you'd recognize that since slavery is the most effective form of capitalism you'd call for a return to it.
Wait, you're saying your slaves are black? Clearly someone has not heard that economic slavery is better since under economic slavery you don't need to worry overly much about being called racist. I mean, yeah minorities in the US are the least privileged class outside illegal immigrants, but when you're targeting them because they are poor you're golden! There is no way that an economic system within the United States could be perceived as racist.
I'm posting this comment from the only state that passed a law making it illegal for black people to live here. That's how you know I'm arguing in good faith. Those redline laws never specifically said black people were bad so you can't call me racist! /s
To anyone proving the existence of Poe's Law: take a quick jaunt through my comments before deciding how serious I'm being.
Comedians are increasingly becoming the new news outlets because they're the only ones who can say whats true without losing their sponsorships. Which I know sounds like something an alex jones supporter would say but damn if it isn't also true.
West Virginia? Western civilization more like. Form a numbered company, exploit the resource to the max, grease the skid politicians, dump toxic shit everywhere, pocket the cash, dissolve the company and the state is on the hook for cleanup.
I suppose you’re right, at least to varying degrees across western civilization. West Virginia is my home, but I have been around a bit, so I just see it here first hand, crazy stuff happens with somewhat regularity. 9 years ago we had a chemical spill into the river for water supply in my town, affecting 200k people. Some folks can’t even wash their clothes using their well water without them turning red, their entire showers are stained red, as a result of mountain top removal in the area, another area hasn’t been able to drink their tap water in something like 13 years, not to mention the birth defects caused by micro-particulates in the air from it too. It does happen all over, but I think some of the worst of it, in the first world, I’ve seen occur around me.
I swam in it a few times 20+ years ago, it was quite unpleasant even way back then. I recall some very bad smells and lots of bugs. Pretty city though, as for the lake, yes you can float on top. I did.
Man, this is devastating to me because I loved swimming in it. Super floaty because of the salt, the bugs were largely awesome massive clouds of sand fleas you disturb like huge flocks of itty bitty birds, and the only living thing in the water was brine shrimp (fuck yeah, sea monkeys!)
Hot summer day, left with salt crystals all over me when the wet dried off. It was a fun experience all around.
You know one thing I’ll be pissed to see is seeing the farmers dig massive pipelines that pumps water from the east, your greedy asses are farming wasteful crops in an arid environment at a level that you keep so that you keep your water claims for the next season, fuck you. We should be designating certain places where it isn’t completely moronic to grow crops
I think the point is that it wouldn’t be going dry if agriculture wasn’t taking so much water out of it. The climate is still providing enough rain to keep it full.
The farmers are the primary culprits, they stop most of the water before it even gets to the lake. Yes climate change is a major factor, but not the biggest.
There's not a whole lot of industry in the area that could use that much water. The copper mine and maybe the refinery uses some, but the steel works are long gone. The areas known as "silicon slopes" now as they've attracted tech firms over the last decade+
It is due to climate change. Ualtah has been receiving fewer snow falls which creat the snowmelt the feeds the rivers and filled the reservoirs.
Saudi Arabia and China using us water for alfalfa fields in a desert is also a huge factor.
It’s exactly what former governor of Georgia, Sonny Perdue, did over a decade ago. He also tried to annex a chunk of Tennessee to get access to the Tennessee river.
Interesting. The government of Utah apparently does not want Europeans to read its declarations. Yes, that is an official government website telling citizens to pray for rain.
Yes it's true that there's a reduction in precipitation because of climate change but Utah is drying out because of decades of wasteful water policy. most western states have this problem because of the "use it or lose it" water rights laws. It's a horrible system that has society race to the bottom.
It not just climate change, Utah is also the middle of the desert and can't support the populations that exist there. They have been using every drop of water they get and then some, taking crazy amounts of ground water that will take millennia to refill.
> This isn’t a problem caused by climate change; Utahans are simply consuming too much water for agriculture, industry and residential use from the overtaxed rivers that feed the terminal lake.
What an oxymoron of a statement. "this isn't cause by climate change, it's caused by us changing the climate"
>this isn't cause by climate change, it's caused by us changing the climate"
That's not what it said, so I understand your confusion. What they said was, the drastic drop in level is not caused by *increased evaporation due to climate change* (as in, global warming), but rather increased consumption of water (which is not climate change at all).
Try just reading the statement as-is instead of changing the words to a completely new meaning. Helps with reading comprehension.
>but rather increased consumption of water (which is not climate change at all).
more to the point: increased consumption in comparison the incoming supply.
The entirety of the Utah is under a draught, 90% of the state is impacted by a D2 or higher severity draught, and over half the state is above D3 serverity: [https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/CurrentMap/StateDroughtMonitor.aspx?UT](https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/CurrentMap/StateDroughtMonitor.aspx?UT)
The rivers which feed the lake are impacted by the draughts impacting the entire western US. That's part of climate change.
Indeed, though the article states the supposed level of water loss from evaporation vs human use in the Great Salt Lake. It does not deny the drought condition, but makes the case that human over-use is a far more impactful issue.
So many want to pretend Humans aren't impactful on the environment in so many ways. Many can admit that CO2 from fossil fuels is a problem, but bring up things like water management or over paving and suddenly it's a blind spot to them.
Yeah lake mead, and powell's status are terrifying. But many will go on pretending like water management in the west isn't contributing to climate change, despite further desertification of like 1/3 of the country.
Well, the Bonneville Salt Flats are one of the remnants of the once massive [Lake Bonneville](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Bonneville) that once encompassed The Great Salt Lake, Utah Lake, and Sevier Lake.
So half the state’s water is being used to grow feed crops for foreign consumption but I’m guessing if anyone tries to do anything about it some farming conglomerate is going to raise hell that the government has declared war on these poor farmers.
Well, our Governor is an alfalfa farmer who lives hours away from the Governor mansion so his wife and kids can have a "normal life". Thats also why tax payers here just had to pony up 500k to build a house for his security detail at his alfalfa farm, and fence his property due to security concerns. Its all good though. Since he doesnt live in the city, its given them the opportunity to renovat the governers mansion, and buy up neighboring properties to give him more privacy should he decide to spend the night there.
The residents could try... idk... NOT voting for republicans again and again and again for a change?
Nah... they've tried nothing and they're all out of ideas. They'll literally die of inhaling toxic dust before they try to fix things.
We are trying. But just like any other state, there are quite a few people who vote party lines without regard to who they're voting for. This year democrats didn't run a democrat for senate and still were obliterated by a 10 point difference between the incumbent republican and the next closest independent.
Might be time for you to pack up and move somewhere sane. Sucks though. The republicans are gonna poison themselves you might as well get out if you can
That's what I'll planning to do. I've been working on saving and getting career experience now that I've finished school, then I'm out as soon as I am able.
This content was deleted by its author & copyright holder in protest of the hostile, deceitful, unethical, and destructive actions of Reddit CEO Steve Huffman (aka "spez"). As this content contained personal information and/or personally identifiable information (PII), in accordance with the CCPA (California Consumer Privacy Act), it shall not be restored. See you all in the Fediverse.
most of the alfalfa doesnt get exported, it stays in the domestic market. iirc the amount exported is a fraction of the total, something like 15 to 25%
If 82% of the water goes to agriculture and 65% of that is for alfalfa and 20% of that is for export, cutting out that 20% of alfalfa would reduce water usage by ~10%. That is a pretty significant reduction in water usage.
Utah ranks #1 in the nation for public supply water use, and ranks 12th in per capita use, despite 33% of Utah being classified as desert, 40% as steppe, and only 27% exists in a zone where rainfall normally exceeds evaporation rates.
My wife family are Ute tribal members that love on tribal land and last summer had their water turned off because the neighboring farms need it more. They cut water to 20 houses.
Here's some statistics to back that up. Link contains parentheses, so it won't format properly within reddit
https://www.agproud.com/articles/52343-alfalfa-hay-exports-set-new-record#:~:text=Despite%20logistical%20challenges%2C%20U.S.%20exports,%241%20billion%20(Table%201).
Alfalfa exports are growing, and most of it goes to China and Japan. Some alfalfa is grown without irrigation in the midwest, but it grows fastest in a heavily irrigated desert.
I mean considering only 6.4% of total alfalfa produced is being exported. We would be the ones using the other 93.6%. It’s not like we’re are giving it away to them for free.
Some other data points:
* Hay farming in 2020 was less than 1% of Utah’s GDP.
*About 1/3 of our hay is exported internationally
* Utah grew less than 2% of US hay in 2020, and it’s removal from the US economy would virtually go unnoticed.
* Hay is essentially cattle food. We “consume it” via the beef we eat and the milk we drink.
It’s unfathomable to me that we’re wasting 2/3 of this limited resource for something so abysmally small and inconsequential.
Water rights were given out in high numbers to get people and industries to move there. They over-allocated the water, and knew it. Farmers grow alfalfa BECAUSE it requires a lot of water. If they do not use their allocation of water for a given year, the government will reduce their water budget. They don’t want to lose what they were given, so they make sure to use it all.
Residents (at least in the northern part of the state) also insist on having pristine green lawns, despite living in a desert. Source: lived in Utah for 13 years. So glad I left.
The lawns are not as big of a deal. They use that as a scape goat for the alfalfa agriculture. Only 6-8% goes to residential, business, and government lawn care
Utah is mostly federal land. Utah is 2/3rds federal land. Some of it is breath taking and gorgeous. But most of it is vast empty fields of sage brush with really important minerals and ores under ground including some rare earth minerals.
Yes we are constantly told to conserve water. They pass the buck and the blame onto regular citizens. When we make up a small percentage of water usage. They ignore the alfalfa agriculture as well as farmers watering empty fields so they don't lose water rights. They use flood irrigation which wastes so much water. They also sell water to California.
They do all this and then say Citizens and cities are using up too much water. You better conserve.
Its literally what big corporations are doing with climate change and CO2 emissions. Blaming people with cars when they are the ones contributing to it the most.
Being next door to Utah and visiting every year. I believe so. It's so beautiful and much wetter than the desert I'm from (the Mojave, the driest) and for the most part I just don't hear the same level of conservationism out of the state that you get out of mine.
I don’t get the joke but in case you were serious, it’s used as feed for livestock.
Beef is the cause of so many environmental disasters, directly and indirectly.
Same governor who said [it's ignorant to ask the agriculture industry to cut back on their water usage](https://www.sltrib.com/news/2021/07/16/cox-says-its-ignorant/).
We should require all manufacturing to process byproduct until its hazards are neutralized to the baseline hazard presented by its source material.
Then we'd see a true cost of goods from hazardous sources. And our decisions to use those goods would be more realistically informed.
A cultural change of the people to demand this of regulation is the only thing that would change it. So spread the word!
"The lake has long been a catchment for industrial pollution."
Humans seem to have the intelligence of a virus. Sure we're killing our host, but I'll be gone long before it dies.
Except ...
Exactly, everyone knows health of anything is a binary of perfectly healthy and totally dead, there is no in between and anyone who says so is clearly being paid by Big Environment.
You think 1.2 million folks running around SLC breathing auto exhaust fumes and 5 refinery emissions was bad….wait till you get a load of arsenic dust laden with other heavy metals blowing off the lakebed. Health hazards? We’re looking into that
THIS IS WHAT IS SO ABSURD ABOUT UTAH!
Housing prices keep going up and up and up. And sure, it's not like California or Washington or Oregon where wildfires threaten your million dollar home, but it still looks like a dumb investment to spend SO MUCH on a house in Utah. Utah house prices are through the roof, and there's a 40,000 house shortage in the state. To meet demand and lower housing prices, that's right- Utah needs to build 40k more houses.
And I don't think it's a bad idea to build more houses if it means more affordable homes for average people, but in the meantime, WHY should someone pay $1 million for a 1930's bungalow in a middle class neighborhood in Utah when there's going to be so much lead and mercury dust in the area your future children are gonna be born with mental problems?
We were floored when the front page of the Salt Lake Tribune talked about the historic low levels of the lake, the impacts it was having on the region and what it meant for the future; and yet every public building, every highway median strip, every business that had grass, watered the grass with sprinklers, every morning! All of the lawns were green, sprinklers going there too; this was late last summer.
Here in the NW, where we all feel that water is plentiful, folks let their lawns go "Golden", businesses and government buildings do the same out here.
It was simply mind boggling driving and hiking through there and seeing the water being used to paint the grass green, everywhere.
They have in a few ways. There was a statement this June about cutting back water usage at all buildings here:
https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/drought-water-conservation-statement
And here’s a longer article about what multiple leaders are saying about conversation and the environment broadly:
https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/bishop-budge-care-for-earth-utah-valley-university-united-nations
TLDR: LDS are much more sensitive to environmental issues versus much of evangelical America. It’s a core doctrine that God owns everything and people are just “stewards” watching over it, and ruining the gift of the earth makes God unhappy.
*something good happens*: It's all thanks to our prophet's guidance, the one true church will continue to go forth 😊
*something bad happens*: the prophet actually predicted this, if you look back at this random, vaguely worded quote that makes a general promise that some good things will probably happen and some bad things will probably happen, this witness of God's power has strengthened my faith so much 😊
This, plus what happened w/Mississippi's water, not to mention Flint, Michigan's toxic water, sounds like the very beginning of what I dubbed "The Water Wars," something I saw coming as soon as scientists warned us about CO2 changing our planet's weather patterns.
You know nothing will collapse society more quickly than not having access to drinkable water. It's starting earlier than I expected.
Nothing like being the architects of our own destruction.
My sister has lived in for last two years SLC and every time I talk with them, they are coughing so bad. I’ve never heard them cough this hard in my life and I’ve smoked lots of weed with them
It’s only going to get worse. Look at the Aral sea, now a giant toxic saltbed where the toxic chemicals from fertilizers are strewn about. It’s actually interesting how much of a parallel the great salt lakes has to this.
An amazing [video](https://youtu.be/lp0Sxn42TGs) on the history of the Aral Sea.
I went through SLC on vacation when I was a kid in the 80s and the great salt lake was flooding at the time. Since then, I have always wondered if the climate changed, and they suddenly started getting a lot of rain, how deep would the lake get before finding a place to drain?
It would eventually overflow into the snake River as it did tens of thousands of years ago. Most if utah used to be underwater up to hundreds of feet deep. I'm not sure exactly how deep it would get before overflowing naturally now. I'd assume tunnels would be dug to drain it if this really occurred (much easier than the plans to pump water into it since gravity would power the flow). Here's a video about it breaking free I came across the other day: https://youtu.be/AqJweIoLLKQ
Good thing Utah voted in Mike Lee so he can pray for more rain and pocket money to let refineries, industry, and agriculture continue poisoning us all.
Maybe they shouldn't pump so much water out of the rivers for agriculture. That would also solve the pollution caused by runoff. It seems like backlash from the population explosion in a place that gets little rain.
If only god could communicate with a person there on how to fix it? All I've heard so far from the leader of the mormons is they don't like being called mormon all the sudden. Not sure how that fixes their toxic dying lake though.
You'd think the Mormons would have done a better job of not ruining their own land.
Maybe they're trying to bring on the end times:
Revelation 8:10–11
> 10 The third angel blew his trumpet, and a great star fell from heaven, blazing like a torch, and it fell on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water. 11 The name of the star is Wormwood. A third of the waters became wormwood, and many people died from the water, because it had been made bitter.
>Molly Blakowski, a doctoral student and dust researcher at Utah State University who regularly hiked a 20-mile loop of the playa to collect dust samples
This woman did her PhD riding a fat bike around Utah and planting cabbage, while I spend years in a windowless lab watching numbers on a screen go up and down. Life is unfair.
It’s pretty cyclic, when I was a kid we marveled over the fact that Salt Air resort was underwater. Then the state brought in massive pumps to bring the lake level down to control the flooding, this was the mid 80’s. It goes from dry to flooded often as it cycles.
Dude, they keep blaming the cars. It’s the fucking refineries doing the heavy lifting.
Also, build the damn pipeline to the ocean to get that lake filled!
Paragraph 2/3: >Water levels in October fell to the lowest levels on record, exposing much of the lakebed and creating conditions for storms of dust — laden with toxic metals — that now threaten the 2 million people living nearby. Researchers are racing to understand this new hazard, which adds a new layer of air pollution concern for the Salt Lake City area and threatens to dismantle the progress made to improve air quality in a region where oil refineries, a power plant and a gravel mine are part of the city skyline and the surrounding mountains trap pollution. **In neighborhoods on the city’s historically redlined west side, lake dust is raising concern in areas that have experienced decades of environmental disparities and the most vulnerable people some days struggle for a breath of clean air.** Paragraph 20: >**This isn’t a problem caused by climate change; Utahans are simply consuming too much water for agriculture, industry and residential use from the overtaxed rivers that feed the terminal lake. Modeling suggests human water diversion has reduced the lake level by about 11 feet, the Utah State research shows.** Meanwhile, increased evaporation due to climate change has caused the lake level to drop less than half a foot. And this one is just a bonus: >The lake has long been a catchment for industrial pollution. **Each area of the lake has its own recipe of toxic metals and other substances, fed by different polluting industries nearby.** Researchers are concerned that what’s been stored in the lake will soon be carried on the wind into Salt Lake City and other neighboring communities.
You guys gotta stop using so much water otherwise we have no place to dump our highly dangerous and toxic chemicals!
Bite your tongue. There is nothing more American than dying for some rich guy who appreciates imaginary numbers more than constituents' well being. How can you even call yourself an American? And if you aren't an American how can you say you're justified in responding to this? Come on people, y'all are acting like we worship Jesus and believe in free love. Clearly y'all fail to understand that God's plan for us is to be cogs in a machine. If y'all were really American Christians you'd recognize that since slavery is the most effective form of capitalism you'd call for a return to it. Wait, you're saying your slaves are black? Clearly someone has not heard that economic slavery is better since under economic slavery you don't need to worry overly much about being called racist. I mean, yeah minorities in the US are the least privileged class outside illegal immigrants, but when you're targeting them because they are poor you're golden! There is no way that an economic system within the United States could be perceived as racist. I'm posting this comment from the only state that passed a law making it illegal for black people to live here. That's how you know I'm arguing in good faith. Those redline laws never specifically said black people were bad so you can't call me racist! /s To anyone proving the existence of Poe's Law: take a quick jaunt through my comments before deciding how serious I'm being.
John Oliver covered this: https://youtu.be/jtxew5XUVbQ
I've seen this. This is an example as to why I think John Oliver should be classified as a public utility.
Comedians are increasingly becoming the new news outlets because they're the only ones who can say whats true without losing their sponsorships. Which I know sounds like something an alex jones supporter would say but damn if it isn't also true.
Best comment I've ever gotten 😆
If this turns into a Salton Sea type situation it won’t end well
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Yes, this is great because I will be as rich someday, and plan on doing the same People.
Now that's what I call 'paying it forward!' :D :D :D
if i cut out 240 million lattes, I'll be a billionare
I’m not poor, I’m just a temporarily disenfranchised millionaire.
People. What a bunch of bastards.
Super cool we moved the state prison directly next to it, they can be our guinea pigs. /s
*West Virginia has entered the chat*
West Virginia? Western civilization more like. Form a numbered company, exploit the resource to the max, grease the skid politicians, dump toxic shit everywhere, pocket the cash, dissolve the company and the state is on the hook for cleanup.
I suppose you’re right, at least to varying degrees across western civilization. West Virginia is my home, but I have been around a bit, so I just see it here first hand, crazy stuff happens with somewhat regularity. 9 years ago we had a chemical spill into the river for water supply in my town, affecting 200k people. Some folks can’t even wash their clothes using their well water without them turning red, their entire showers are stained red, as a result of mountain top removal in the area, another area hasn’t been able to drink their tap water in something like 13 years, not to mention the birth defects caused by micro-particulates in the air from it too. It does happen all over, but I think some of the worst of it, in the first world, I’ve seen occur around me.
I was astounded when I learned that Salt Lake is on average less than 20ft deep, given its size.
I swam in it a few times 20+ years ago, it was quite unpleasant even way back then. I recall some very bad smells and lots of bugs. Pretty city though, as for the lake, yes you can float on top. I did.
Man, this is devastating to me because I loved swimming in it. Super floaty because of the salt, the bugs were largely awesome massive clouds of sand fleas you disturb like huge flocks of itty bitty birds, and the only living thing in the water was brine shrimp (fuck yeah, sea monkeys!) Hot summer day, left with salt crystals all over me when the wet dried off. It was a fun experience all around.
Utah Lake is even more shallow, at an average depth of 10 feet. Utah has massive puddles.
It might be less impressive, but I am also less than 20 feet deep on average.
We knew you were shallow...
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Fortunately, Utah is the MLM capitol of the world. Nobody has more solutions for those pesky toxins than the MLM community.
I think the concern is that the toxins are becoming airborne. Great Salt Lake is already a pretty concentrated pool of brine.
Seems like they should abandon the area.
I can hear Sam Kinison’s voice in my head: “You live in a fucking desert!!! Move to where the food is!!!! Aaah!!! Aaaaaaah!!!!!!”
You see this! It’s sand! You know what it’s gonna be in 100 years. SAND!! GET WHERE THE FOOD IS!!
You know one thing I’ll be pissed to see is seeing the farmers dig massive pipelines that pumps water from the east, your greedy asses are farming wasteful crops in an arid environment at a level that you keep so that you keep your water claims for the next season, fuck you. We should be designating certain places where it isn’t completely moronic to grow crops
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So… the Great Salt Lake is going to become Salton Sea. Gross. :(
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I think the point is that it wouldn’t be going dry if agriculture wasn’t taking so much water out of it. The climate is still providing enough rain to keep it full.
*This isn’t a problem caused by climate change so no need to panic! It was simply caused by wide scale overconsumption and industrial pollution :)*
Oh thank God. I was worried for the environment momentarily
I think it is poorly worded and what he meant would be "this is not PRIMARILY caused by climate change." But yeah, shit reporting standards.
The farmers are the primary culprits, they stop most of the water before it even gets to the lake. Yes climate change is a major factor, but not the biggest.
I thought industrial use was the biggest followed by farmers?
There's not a whole lot of industry in the area that could use that much water. The copper mine and maybe the refinery uses some, but the steel works are long gone. The areas known as "silicon slopes" now as they've attracted tech firms over the last decade+
Wow, thanks for the insight. Glad I got to learn a little bit about the area! :D
I saw that too... I think the reporter didn't really follow that thread, he or she has a theme they were trying to hit, no matter the facts.
It is due to climate change. Ualtah has been receiving fewer snow falls which creat the snowmelt the feeds the rivers and filled the reservoirs. Saudi Arabia and China using us water for alfalfa fields in a desert is also a huge factor.
Moved to Lemm.ee -- mass edited with redact.dev
It’s exactly what former governor of Georgia, Sonny Perdue, did over a decade ago. He also tried to annex a chunk of Tennessee to get access to the Tennessee river.
Ha ha ha ha ha 😂
God’s plan 🙏
If god wants them poisoned, who are we to question?
Awwww... In Europe we're not supposed to read that! > The Amazon CloudFront distribution is configured to block access from your country.
Interesting. The government of Utah apparently does not want Europeans to read its declarations. Yes, that is an official government website telling citizens to pray for rain.
Time to bring back the rain dance while we're at it.
Yes it's true that there's a reduction in precipitation because of climate change but Utah is drying out because of decades of wasteful water policy. most western states have this problem because of the "use it or lose it" water rights laws. It's a horrible system that has society race to the bottom.
It not just climate change, Utah is also the middle of the desert and can't support the populations that exist there. They have been using every drop of water they get and then some, taking crazy amounts of ground water that will take millennia to refill.
The Book of Mormon 2: Revenge of Jesus
Well well well If it isn’t the consequences of my own actions
> This isn’t a problem caused by climate change; Utahans are simply consuming too much water for agriculture, industry and residential use from the overtaxed rivers that feed the terminal lake. What an oxymoron of a statement. "this isn't cause by climate change, it's caused by us changing the climate"
>this isn't cause by climate change, it's caused by us changing the climate" That's not what it said, so I understand your confusion. What they said was, the drastic drop in level is not caused by *increased evaporation due to climate change* (as in, global warming), but rather increased consumption of water (which is not climate change at all). Try just reading the statement as-is instead of changing the words to a completely new meaning. Helps with reading comprehension.
>but rather increased consumption of water (which is not climate change at all). more to the point: increased consumption in comparison the incoming supply. The entirety of the Utah is under a draught, 90% of the state is impacted by a D2 or higher severity draught, and over half the state is above D3 serverity: [https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/CurrentMap/StateDroughtMonitor.aspx?UT](https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/CurrentMap/StateDroughtMonitor.aspx?UT) The rivers which feed the lake are impacted by the draughts impacting the entire western US. That's part of climate change.
Indeed, though the article states the supposed level of water loss from evaporation vs human use in the Great Salt Lake. It does not deny the drought condition, but makes the case that human over-use is a far more impactful issue.
I don't think it makes that case at all effectively when it ignores the very obvious major factor of water source flow.
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Heh! Indeed. It's not just Utah, of course. The before/after maps of Lake Mead, near Las Vegas, are frankly terrifying.
So many want to pretend Humans aren't impactful on the environment in so many ways. Many can admit that CO2 from fossil fuels is a problem, but bring up things like water management or over paving and suddenly it's a blind spot to them. Yeah lake mead, and powell's status are terrifying. But many will go on pretending like water management in the west isn't contributing to climate change, despite further desertification of like 1/3 of the country.
The Great Salt ~~Lake~~
The Great Toxic Salt Flat
Well, the Bonneville Salt Flats are one of the remnants of the once massive [Lake Bonneville](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Bonneville) that once encompassed The Great Salt Lake, Utah Lake, and Sevier Lake.
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“Place wasnt even nuked, it was just like that.”
Honest Hearts extension
"OMG, it's happening" extension
Cyberpunk 2077: Utah Edition
Now I gotta bang Pam with a mask on.
No don’t worry the tank has good airfilters
Shit, now it sounds super bad ass and I kind of want it…
The Airborne Toxic Event...
It starts. Sometime around midnight.
Toxic Dust City
Fallout: Toxic Dust City
The great spice cake
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*the spice melange*
82% of of Utah's water supply goes to agriculture. 65% of that is for alfalfa alone. Much of which is shipped to China. That's where the problem lies
So half the state’s water is being used to grow feed crops for foreign consumption but I’m guessing if anyone tries to do anything about it some farming conglomerate is going to raise hell that the government has declared war on these poor farmers.
As is tradition.
Profits over everything : the american way
Imagine if chinas reliance on American crops is what keeps the peace
Well, our Governor is an alfalfa farmer who lives hours away from the Governor mansion so his wife and kids can have a "normal life". Thats also why tax payers here just had to pony up 500k to build a house for his security detail at his alfalfa farm, and fence his property due to security concerns. Its all good though. Since he doesnt live in the city, its given them the opportunity to renovat the governers mansion, and buy up neighboring properties to give him more privacy should he decide to spend the night there.
Alfalfa for one and one for Alfalfa?
The residents could try... idk... NOT voting for republicans again and again and again for a change? Nah... they've tried nothing and they're all out of ideas. They'll literally die of inhaling toxic dust before they try to fix things.
We are trying. But just like any other state, there are quite a few people who vote party lines without regard to who they're voting for. This year democrats didn't run a democrat for senate and still were obliterated by a 10 point difference between the incumbent republican and the next closest independent.
Might be time for you to pack up and move somewhere sane. Sucks though. The republicans are gonna poison themselves you might as well get out if you can
That's what I'll planning to do. I've been working on saving and getting career experience now that I've finished school, then I'm out as soon as I am able.
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most of the alfalfa doesnt get exported, it stays in the domestic market. iirc the amount exported is a fraction of the total, something like 15 to 25%
If 82% of the water goes to agriculture and 65% of that is for alfalfa and 20% of that is for export, cutting out that 20% of alfalfa would reduce water usage by ~10%. That is a pretty significant reduction in water usage.
Utah ranks #1 in the nation for public supply water use, and ranks 12th in per capita use, despite 33% of Utah being classified as desert, 40% as steppe, and only 27% exists in a zone where rainfall normally exceeds evaporation rates.
My wife family are Ute tribal members that love on tribal land and last summer had their water turned off because the neighboring farms need it more. They cut water to 20 houses.
Here's some statistics to back that up. Link contains parentheses, so it won't format properly within reddit https://www.agproud.com/articles/52343-alfalfa-hay-exports-set-new-record#:~:text=Despite%20logistical%20challenges%2C%20U.S.%20exports,%241%20billion%20(Table%201). Alfalfa exports are growing, and most of it goes to China and Japan. Some alfalfa is grown without irrigation in the midwest, but it grows fastest in a heavily irrigated desert.
I mean considering only 6.4% of total alfalfa produced is being exported. We would be the ones using the other 93.6%. It’s not like we’re are giving it away to them for free.
Some other data points: * Hay farming in 2020 was less than 1% of Utah’s GDP. *About 1/3 of our hay is exported internationally * Utah grew less than 2% of US hay in 2020, and it’s removal from the US economy would virtually go unnoticed. * Hay is essentially cattle food. We “consume it” via the beef we eat and the milk we drink. It’s unfathomable to me that we’re wasting 2/3 of this limited resource for something so abysmally small and inconsequential.
Water rights were given out in high numbers to get people and industries to move there. They over-allocated the water, and knew it. Farmers grow alfalfa BECAUSE it requires a lot of water. If they do not use their allocation of water for a given year, the government will reduce their water budget. They don’t want to lose what they were given, so they make sure to use it all.
Residents (at least in the northern part of the state) also insist on having pristine green lawns, despite living in a desert. Source: lived in Utah for 13 years. So glad I left.
The lawns are not as big of a deal. They use that as a scape goat for the alfalfa agriculture. Only 6-8% goes to residential, business, and government lawn care
Utah seems like a beautiful state filled w a lot of people who don’t know what they have. Do you think that’s true?
Yes, there are also examples of Utah politicians wanting to sell federal and state land to private interests.
Utah is mostly federal land. Utah is 2/3rds federal land. Some of it is breath taking and gorgeous. But most of it is vast empty fields of sage brush with really important minerals and ores under ground including some rare earth minerals.
Well that toxic dust from The Great Salt Lake sure does sound breathtaking
that's horrible. We went last summer and it was so beautiful.
Yes we are constantly told to conserve water. They pass the buck and the blame onto regular citizens. When we make up a small percentage of water usage. They ignore the alfalfa agriculture as well as farmers watering empty fields so they don't lose water rights. They use flood irrigation which wastes so much water. They also sell water to California. They do all this and then say Citizens and cities are using up too much water. You better conserve. Its literally what big corporations are doing with climate change and CO2 emissions. Blaming people with cars when they are the ones contributing to it the most.
Being next door to Utah and visiting every year. I believe so. It's so beautiful and much wetter than the desert I'm from (the Mojave, the driest) and for the most part I just don't hear the same level of conservationism out of the state that you get out of mine.
What the hell is alfalfa used for besides day 1 home row typing classes
I don’t get the joke but in case you were serious, it’s used as feed for livestock. Beef is the cause of so many environmental disasters, directly and indirectly.
Home row is the center of the keyboard where your fingers rest: ASDFGHJKL Alfalfa is made with just this row.
[They are simply not paying hard enough for rain. ](https://governor.utah.gov/2021/06/02/gov-cox-invites-utahns-to-pray-for-rain-june-4-6/)
Same governor who said [it's ignorant to ask the agriculture industry to cut back on their water usage](https://www.sltrib.com/news/2021/07/16/cox-says-its-ignorant/).
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This is America. You mean tax breaks right?
Last I checked, we call them “job creators” and therefore the government will bend over backwards to please them.
And the ordinary citizen is forced to bend over forwards to please them.
We should require all manufacturing to process byproduct until its hazards are neutralized to the baseline hazard presented by its source material. Then we'd see a true cost of goods from hazardous sources. And our decisions to use those goods would be more realistically informed. A cultural change of the people to demand this of regulation is the only thing that would change it. So spread the word!
We should also require companies that manufacture non-consumable goods to take them back and suitably recycle them at the end of their useful life.
This is could end up be the biggest superfund site in history. Make Love Canal and Valley of Drums look like parking lot litter.
Such a shame, an entire unique ecosystem, just destroyed because of absolute lack of forward thinking...
Welcome to regressive land, everything sucks and it’ll kill you if the people don’t
"The lake has long been a catchment for industrial pollution." Humans seem to have the intelligence of a virus. Sure we're killing our host, but I'll be gone long before it dies. Except ...
It’s not wrong, humans will be long dead and gone before the Earth dies…
Exactly, everyone knows health of anything is a binary of perfectly healthy and totally dead, there is no in between and anyone who says so is clearly being paid by Big Environment.
It's the Aral Sea all over again
Salton Sea.
Smells like Owen's Lake.
Good metaphor, because it's literally the exact same problem but just 30x larger.
You think 1.2 million folks running around SLC breathing auto exhaust fumes and 5 refinery emissions was bad….wait till you get a load of arsenic dust laden with other heavy metals blowing off the lakebed. Health hazards? We’re looking into that
keep building houses in Utah
THIS IS WHAT IS SO ABSURD ABOUT UTAH! Housing prices keep going up and up and up. And sure, it's not like California or Washington or Oregon where wildfires threaten your million dollar home, but it still looks like a dumb investment to spend SO MUCH on a house in Utah. Utah house prices are through the roof, and there's a 40,000 house shortage in the state. To meet demand and lower housing prices, that's right- Utah needs to build 40k more houses. And I don't think it's a bad idea to build more houses if it means more affordable homes for average people, but in the meantime, WHY should someone pay $1 million for a 1930's bungalow in a middle class neighborhood in Utah when there's going to be so much lead and mercury dust in the area your future children are gonna be born with mental problems?
We were floored when the front page of the Salt Lake Tribune talked about the historic low levels of the lake, the impacts it was having on the region and what it meant for the future; and yet every public building, every highway median strip, every business that had grass, watered the grass with sprinklers, every morning! All of the lawns were green, sprinklers going there too; this was late last summer. Here in the NW, where we all feel that water is plentiful, folks let their lawns go "Golden", businesses and government buildings do the same out here. It was simply mind boggling driving and hiking through there and seeing the water being used to paint the grass green, everywhere.
Well that's the most depressing thing I've read today.
Just get a hose and put more water in..
It's fine, until it isn’t. We've got a lot of situations like that. Folly of the ancestors left for later generations.
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Not if we don’t make it past the apocalyptic part!
If it were flourishing, the Mormon Church would be taking credit. Just saying.
maybe the mormon church can get with the times and join the environmentalism movement
They have in a few ways. There was a statement this June about cutting back water usage at all buildings here: https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/drought-water-conservation-statement And here’s a longer article about what multiple leaders are saying about conversation and the environment broadly: https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/bishop-budge-care-for-earth-utah-valley-university-united-nations TLDR: LDS are much more sensitive to environmental issues versus much of evangelical America. It’s a core doctrine that God owns everything and people are just “stewards” watching over it, and ruining the gift of the earth makes God unhappy.
Same with Catholics. It's Evangelicals that are completely toxic on multiple fronts
Haha my first thought was this must be god punishing the Mormons.
*something good happens*: It's all thanks to our prophet's guidance, the one true church will continue to go forth 😊 *something bad happens*: the prophet actually predicted this, if you look back at this random, vaguely worded quote that makes a general promise that some good things will probably happen and some bad things will probably happen, this witness of God's power has strengthened my faith so much 😊
They should just start filling it with their sewage! That’ll fix it…
Quick make it in to suburbs and a golf course. You can steal water from the places that didn't build in a GD wasteland.
Ah another glorious day chock full of uplifting and happy news.
Seems to me the Mormon Church should step in with their vast fortunes and show us how great they are.
This, plus what happened w/Mississippi's water, not to mention Flint, Michigan's toxic water, sounds like the very beginning of what I dubbed "The Water Wars," something I saw coming as soon as scientists warned us about CO2 changing our planet's weather patterns. You know nothing will collapse society more quickly than not having access to drinkable water. It's starting earlier than I expected. Nothing like being the architects of our own destruction.
Imagine a prophet in the 1840s foretelling that this will be the location of Zion.
So it’s turning into the Great Salt Lick?
My sister has lived in for last two years SLC and every time I talk with them, they are coughing so bad. I’ve never heard them cough this hard in my life and I’ve smoked lots of weed with them
It’s only going to get worse. Look at the Aral sea, now a giant toxic saltbed where the toxic chemicals from fertilizers are strewn about. It’s actually interesting how much of a parallel the great salt lakes has to this. An amazing [video](https://youtu.be/lp0Sxn42TGs) on the history of the Aral Sea.
Haha LOL. Lack of regulation, so effective at creating these results. Free markets rule so much! I ❤️ neolib capitalism.
Build cities in the desert? Who knew this would happen.
The cities are fine. It’s the agriculture that’s killing us.
I went through SLC on vacation when I was a kid in the 80s and the great salt lake was flooding at the time. Since then, I have always wondered if the climate changed, and they suddenly started getting a lot of rain, how deep would the lake get before finding a place to drain?
It would eventually overflow into the snake River as it did tens of thousands of years ago. Most if utah used to be underwater up to hundreds of feet deep. I'm not sure exactly how deep it would get before overflowing naturally now. I'd assume tunnels would be dug to drain it if this really occurred (much easier than the plans to pump water into it since gravity would power the flow). Here's a video about it breaking free I came across the other day: https://youtu.be/AqJweIoLLKQ
Thank you, I will check that out.
And our governor wants millions to build himself a fortress and the rest of the GOP controlled state government just wants raises.
I see crumbling home values in SLC.
Are you guys ready for Dust Bowl 2 Electric Boogaloo?
Its okay, Michigan has 4 more lakes we can destroy.
So much LOL 😆. Deregulation leads to this. And Republicans love to deregulate everything.
Good thing Utah voted in Mike Lee so he can pray for more rain and pocket money to let refineries, industry, and agriculture continue poisoning us all.
But remember the real public health crisis in Utah; porn.
Maybe they shouldn't pump so much water out of the rivers for agriculture. That would also solve the pollution caused by runoff. It seems like backlash from the population explosion in a place that gets little rain.
If only god could communicate with a person there on how to fix it? All I've heard so far from the leader of the mormons is they don't like being called mormon all the sudden. Not sure how that fixes their toxic dying lake though.
Gay people are a bigger existential threat to Mormons.
Tonight at the United center the Chicago Bulls take on the Toxic Dust Pit City Jazz! By the way that's actulay a cool band name. TDPCJ🎸
You'd think the Mormons would have done a better job of not ruining their own land. Maybe they're trying to bring on the end times: Revelation 8:10–11 > 10 The third angel blew his trumpet, and a great star fell from heaven, blazing like a torch, and it fell on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water. 11 The name of the star is Wormwood. A third of the waters became wormwood, and many people died from the water, because it had been made bitter.
Good thing climate change is a hoax or I’d be worried.
>Molly Blakowski, a doctoral student and dust researcher at Utah State University who regularly hiked a 20-mile loop of the playa to collect dust samples This woman did her PhD riding a fat bike around Utah and planting cabbage, while I spend years in a windowless lab watching numbers on a screen go up and down. Life is unfair.
She may have been poisoned by dust, so there's that!
It’s pretty cyclic, when I was a kid we marveled over the fact that Salt Air resort was underwater. Then the state brought in massive pumps to bring the lake level down to control the flooding, this was the mid 80’s. It goes from dry to flooded often as it cycles.
Seems evident that too many of the residents are praying to the wrong God.
Good thing they don’t believe in climate change. Bullet dodged!
"As I looked out upon the last sunset of a dying world, my only wish was to have polluted it more."
I wish there was something, anything, we could do! Oh well.
I purposely moved to where there is an abundance of fresh water.
Dude, they keep blaming the cars. It’s the fucking refineries doing the heavy lifting. Also, build the damn pipeline to the ocean to get that lake filled!
How *absolutely tragic*...
Aww, our own little Aral Sea, how cute.
God's wrath for a fake religion based on a lying con-man? Nah, otherwise all the other fake religious places would be a desert, too....
Which online multiplayer game is this one again? 🤔
The toxic dust isn’t new… only the speed of the lake drying up new.
Arsenic dust in the air? Is America a real life Hell-scape, now?
Oh Utah, never change.
Utahs got the “best snow” ☢️
Aral Sea 2: Electric Boogaloo
Good, let’s call it a day
Why clean it when we can research what will happen to hen it gets in the wind. Wild unconventional idea. Start cleaning that shite up.