The Great Salt Lake has hit a new historic low for the second time in less than a year, a major milestone as the US west continues to weather a historic megadrought.
The Utah Department of Natural Resources said in a news release on Monday that the Great Salt Lake dipped to 4,190 over the weekend. 1 ft 1,277. 1 meters is lower than the previous historic low set in October, which matched a 170 year record low at the time. The agency said that lake levels are expected to keep dropping until fall or winter, as conditions exacerbated by the climate crisis continue to put a strain on water levels.
The giant lake near Salt Lake City is the largest natural lake west of the Mississippi River. Its dwindling water levels have put millions of migrating birds at risk and threatens a lake-based economy that is worth an estimated $1.3 billion in mineral extraction, brine shrimp and recreation. The scientists say that the expanding amount of exposed lakebed could also send arsenic-laced dust into the air that millions breathe.
The state's Republican-led legislature is trying to reverse the trend, but it won't be easy to do. For years water has been diverted away from the lake for homes and crops in the nation's fastest-growing state that is also one of the driest.
The state's two largest reservoirs in Lake Oroville and Shasta Lake are at critically dry levels. On the Arizona-Nevada border, a shrinking Lake Mead continues to reveal its mysteries as the waters recede, including a body in a barrel and a second world war-era boat.