Preserving the Great Salt Lake

By Natalie Angier

Utah struggles to tame a body of water turned outlaw

For three miles beyond what was once the eastern edge of the Great Salt Lake in Utah, cottonwood and birch trees stand in 9 ft. of brackish water, their trunks burned and their branches leafless. Dead wood and decaying, bloated carp litter the shore. Roads are flooded out, towers for power lines sit in muddy pools, and farther south, the famed Saltair resort with its Moorish-style gold domes is shut down.

Roiled since 1982 by prodigious storms, the 30-mile-wide Great Salt Lake has risen 10 ft., its fastest climb ever, overspilling its borders and flooding the land around it. What was once the driest state in the union after Nevada is fast becoming a water wasteland: tens of millions of dollars' worth of property has been destroyed, wildlife has diminished catastrophically, and tourism around the lake has bottomed out. Says Utah Governor Scott Matheson, with tragicomic wit: "It's a helluva way to run a desert."

In an effort to stem the tide of destruction, workers with the Southern Pacific Railroad maneuvered a large crane last week along a 27-mile causeway built of 50 million cu. yds. of rock, sand and gravel that divides the lake into north and south sections. The aim of the engineers: to begin carving a 300-ft. breach in the causeway, the final step in a three-month, $3.2 million project. If they are successful, water on the south side of the lake will fall about 9 in. during the next two months, lessening the threat of floods to Salt Lake City, nearby suburbs, interstate highways and railroads. The north segment of the lake, located in a thinly populated area, could climb as much as 3 ft.

The recent deluge is only the latest crisis in the Great Salt Lake's erratic history. Lying in the Great Basin between the Rockies and Sierra Nevadas, the lake collects runoff from the nearby Wasatch Range. Its only outlet is through evaporation, so the lake becomes 2 million tons richer each year in mountain minerals that have no means of escape. Some parts of the lake can be eight times saltier than the ocean. Perhaps even more remarkable, the Great Salt Lake generates its own weather system, known as the dreaded lake effect (DLE). During early spring, when a storm moves into the area, the clouds over the lake are often colder than the water. As a result, warm air laden with moisture rises into the clouds, intensifying the storm. Normally, the most significant impact of the DLE is to enliven the skiing season with a few extra feet of snow. But in the 1870s the lake swelled to an alltime high of 4,211.6 ft. above sea level. In 1983, April showers followed an exceptionally snowy winter and led to this year's peak of 4,209.25 ft. Larger in an average year than Rhode Island, the lake has grown by 30%, to 2,250 sq. mi. As one Utah meteorologist puts it, "If you compared it to earthquakes, it would be as if you had a Richter scale from one to ten, and the last two years were 15."

With an emergency at hand, the state spent $21 million to raise the interstate highway at the south end of the lake and another $50 million to clean up damaged Salt Lake City. Companies operating at waterside constructed dikes to protect their faculties.

The lake's expansion was disastrous for the region's wildlife. Forty years ago, Utah and the Federal Government created a series of vital state refuges, 400,000 acres of fresh-water marshes fed by mountain streams and protected from the saline lake by small dikes. Now three-quarters of all the marshlands have been flooded with salt water, which has killed the fish and driven away nesting birds. Some 300,000 of the 400,000 ducks that normally hatch each year have been lost, and the reproduction rate of Canadian geese has been cut in half. Officials also fear for the habitats of endangered bald eagles and peregrine falcons. Says Sam Manes, a biologist with the Utah State Division of Wildlife Resources: "I wish this hadn't happened in my lifetime. I may never see the lake go down again."

Despite the threatened disappearance of this natural paradise, some quarters staunchly oppose the breach idea. Before the flooding, the causeway had unbalanced the salinity of the lake, giving the north end a salt content of about 28%, in contrast to the south's 12%. That discrepancy has been a particular boon to the Great Salt Lake Minerals & Chemicals Corp., the largest company to mine the northern waters for salt and potassium. Because the causeway breach will eliminate the disparity and further reduce mining efficiency, GSL fears that its $85 million plant and 300 employees will be put out of business. It sued unsuccessfully in federal court to stop the project. Says GSL President Peter Behrens: "It's amazing that the Government can expropriate our livelihood without giving us any compensation."

The most nagging problem of all, however, is the unpredictability of the region's weather. The new channel in the causeway will certainly help if flooding continues next year, a condition the weather service now predicts. But the Great Salt Lake is a kind of watery manic-depressive: it has undergone four major up-and-down cycles in the past century. The lake's fitful behavior makes it difficult to justify huge sums of remedial money for what may be temporary ills. Says Governor Matheson: "It's hard to make long-range solutions for too much water when several years from now, we may not even have that problem." --By Natalie Angier.

Reported by Robert C. Wurmstedt/Salt Lake City

With reporting by Robert C. Wurmstedt