As the Great Salt Lake dries up, Utah faces 'an environmental nuclear bomb'

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As the Great Salt Lake dries up, Utah faces 'an environmental nuclear bomb'

https://greeleytribune.net/as-the-great-salt-lake-dries-up-utah-faces-an-environmental-nuclear-bomb/

As the Great Salt Lake dries up, Utah faces ‘an environmental nuclear bomb’
June 8, 2022 by Amelia

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The most dangerous part is that the air around Salt Lake City sometimes turned toxic. The lake floor contains high levels of arsenic and as more of it is exposed, thunderstorms carry that arsenic into the lungs of nearby residents, who make up three-quarters of Utah’s population.

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Since climate change is causing record-breaking droughts, there is no easy solution. Saving the Great Salt Lake would require melting more ice from the mountains to the lake, which means less water for residents and farmers. This would threaten the region’s dangerous population growth and high-value agriculture – something state leaders seem reluctant to do.

Utah’s dilemma raises a key question as the country heats up: How quickly are Americans willing to adapt to the effects of climate change, even if those effects become immediate, obvious, and potentially catastrophic?

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Now two changes are unbalancing that system. There is an explosive population growth, which removes more water from those rivers before reaching the lake.

According to Utah State University professor and Utah state climatologist Robert Gillies, the second shift is climate change. Higher temperatures cause more snowpack to turn into water vapor, which then escapes into the atmosphere instead of turning into liquid and flowing into rivers. More heat also means more water demand for lawns or crops, further reducing the amount that reaches the lake.

And a shrinking lake means less ice. As storms pass over the Great Salt Lake, they absorb some of its moisture, which then falls into the mountains as snow. A fading lake threatens that pattern.

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This story was originally published on nytimes.com. Read it here.