I’ve just finished watching a British limited series called Toxic Town. The four-one hour episodes chronicle how in 1984 the town council of Corby, northwest of London, attempted to decontaminate a closed steel manufacturing plant property. In a rush to remove poisonous sludge and resuscitate industry and employment, they spread … [continued]
The ‘Great Salt Lake is drying, Antarctica is overheating. What does it all mean? It means we humans need to pick up our game.
Getting People To Move Where There’s More Water Another thing that would help greatly would be to curb population growth along the Wasatch Front. No, you’re never going to talk Mormons into having fewer kids, but their leaders could talk them into not treating Utah like it’s the “promised land” … [continued]
“Prime The Pump” On top of these Aral Sea-like health issues is the loss of lake-effect snow, a problem that creates a feedback loop of drying. Unlike the lake-effect of the Great Lakes, the Salt Lake can’t really add much moisture to the air in winter, but it can serve … [continued]
Industrial activity is causing problems with this natural process. Salt mining, potash operations, and other human activity was not only drying the area up, but was taking salt out of the system entirely. For example, potash operations pumped salt water and brine out from beneath the flats, which then got … [continued]
Because the process of drying up Lake Cabeza de Vaca and its remnant child lakes happened mostly naturally (with only the last bit caused by Anthropogenic climate change), this presents the absolute best case scenario for a dried up Salt Lake, but as I’ll get to later, the problem will … [continued]
Utah’s Great Salt Lake is now at a record low. The rivers that feed the big inland sea have been increasingly diverted to not only support drinking water and agriculture for a growing population, but also to water lawns and for other water uses. Underlying all this is a culture … [continued]
