In 2022, the Utah’s population came to the realization that as the state’s mega-drought was lingering and that we were about to lose our Great Salt Lake to terrible water management, excessive irrigation and exploding population growth.
With this, all the dirt would be exposed and the heavy metals encrusted into it would be blown by the wind and poison us all. All hands were on deck to find solutions and money to “Save the Lake”.
Rewind back to the late 1980’s when we got to Utah. The winters of 81-82, 82-83 and 83-84 were some of the snowiest in memory and with that the level of the Great Salt Lake kept on rising to 4,212 feet in 1986, to the point that the airport was threatened.
This led the then Utah governor Norm Bangerter to okay, in 1987, a $71.7 million flood-control plan that would pumped water from the Great Salt Lake into the western desert, just north of the famous Bonneville Salt Flats. Today, with added corruption and inflation this deal might have cost $2 billion with no one batting an eye about the cost.
For 2 years, 2.7 million acre-feet of water got pumped from the Great Salt Lake to that evaporation basin in the western desert (April 1987 through June 1989) and when it was mothballed. our mega-drought began.
After governor Bangerter died from a stroke just 8 years ago, he’s been mostly remembered for the sort of white elephants his pumps were, and for a highway that bears his name near the airport. Today, after this winter’s huge snow accumulation, Salt Lake City is bracing for dangerous flooding just like in the spring of 1984.
This made me wonder that we might have to finally put the pumps to work again if the atmospheric river weather pattern we had this year were to repeat itself. In the past, the lake did rise 20 feet over a 20-year period, and 12 of those feet happened during a 5-year span, as the lake level can swing dramatically.
On July 3, 2022, the lake level was at 4,170 feet and today after our initial snow melting it has just picked up two feet.
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