Retreating the water level is exposed to the shaved, rich arsenic in Utah. Future dust storms will be more dangerous.
People in August 2021 make their way into the waters of the Great Salt -Leik on the Island of Antelope.
(Justin Sullivan / Getti)
Utah-third in the USA. From the dried plateau Colorado to even more dry pools, it’s almost all the desert.
In high school, I am a tile with the only team of Utu club crews. Every spring we traveled to the boats to a large salty lake – the only place for miles with enough water to grow. Salt water lake from the sulfur, which made everything that touched the stink. Thousands of brine flies threw our docks. They would be the rug my hands so thick that when I looked down, I would see more flies than the flesh.
But away from the shore, I could notice the beauty around. The water will still stretch in all directions that I have not seen the land beyond. When the wind did not rise, the lake lay flat, shiny and blue. The mountains punched their surface and cloned in the pulsation below. They looked like rotating tops – passing from the top to the flared bases, and then returning to sharp dots.
I enthusiastically noticed how the lake was recorded by life. I would have looked down, and what it seemed to me floating the nozzle flakes, they would start swimming. These were the brine shrimp: crustaceans, carrying the ecosystem of a large Salt leak on their centimeter back. The waterfowl would fill the sky, diving, to dip their beaks and spin.
In the year when I went to college, one of my sisters joined the crew team. I hoped we could contact the lake. But in November, a former teammate called me. She said that next year our team did not lead on a big Salt -leuk; that they can never be scraped again. Utah was in a shortage of water, and the lake leaned against the lowest levels.
The coastline retreated so much that our docks became unusable. Most of the boats were taken out of the water when they penetrated the bow. The boats that remained in the dry marina – the city – the ghost, where, only months before, I was paddled every day.
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The great Salt Lazer is 20 miles northwest of my house to Salt -Leik -Sity. You see it every time you look at the horizon: a series of silver that separates the earth and the sky.
From its perch, a large salty lake supports all the northern Utah. The humidity evaporates from the lake and falls into the nearby mountains (mostly like snow, giving the youth fabulous skis). Spring will come, this water goes through the valleys of Utah and returns to the lake. On his way, he moisturizes the plants, animals and humans on the neighboring front of Vasatch, where the Salt -Leik -Siti live.
When I first visited a large Salt Lek on a fifth-grade excursion, it covered 1700 square miles. Although I did not know it yet, it was half my size 30 years before, when my mom was a fifth -grader. In the 1980s, a large Salt -Leik spread to 3,300 square miles -in the kind of Ayland and Delaware in combination.
Now my younger sisters in the fifth grade. And again, the lake decreased, dropping to 888 square miles in 2022. Without significant changes, a large salt lake will disappear throughout my life.
It will write a disaster for Utah. The New York Times says the disappearance of the great Salt -Leik will “An environmental nuclear bomb“The water supply was set, and the ecosystems were killed: from the brine in the lake to more than 10 million migration birds, which are refueling annually in their swamps.
When Utah was industrialized, mines began to dump the waste into the lake, polluting it with heavy metals like arsenic. As a terminal lake, a large salt lake has retreats, but no outlets except evaporation. All the metals, which, if -were poured into a large salty lake, accumulated in its lake over time.
Now retreating the water level exposes the cracked, rich arsenic. The upper storms began to blow down the lake, picking up clouds of poisonous dust. They transfer it to the Vasatch Front, which houses 2.8 million residents of Utah.
Even inhalation of ordinary dust can be devastating. Thunderstorms with arsenic from the dried Lake of the Great Salt Leek have an additional danger. When these thunderstorms come, the air will become toxic. Millions of Yutan along the front of Vasatcha – including my whole family – breathe poison.
This dust will not kill you overnight, but EPA binds it with “asthma, heart attacks and premature death.” Such catastrophes happened to other lakes, and nearby cities did not go well. After Lake Owns, a salty lake in California, dried and toxic dust storms began, cities along its coast were emptied. The arid lake filled the surrounding air PM10 – small particles that have serious health effects when inhaled. Lake Owns became the largest PM10 source in the country, spreading pollution in the West. A large salty lake is 15 times higher than when -there was Lake Owns. His collapse would be much more catastrophic.
It is scary to me thinking about what happens to my community when the great Salt -Leik disappeared. All my little brothers and sisters have serious asthma, and two live only 60 percent of normal lung power.
When my brother visited the great Salt Lek on his own tour of the fifth grade, his decorative class applied dust on the lake, which immersed it in a difficult attack asthma. Fortunately, he was ready for an inhaler. But what will happen to my siblings when these dust storms invade Salt -Leik -Siti? And the air is on his home? Could he survive in the place where he could barely breathe?
When the lake dries completely, I know that my family has the means to leave the youth and we will.
Here’s what happened to the cities around Lake Owns. Those who could afford it escaped. Less lucky remained and coped with the consequences.
For the next few years, determine the fate of the great Salt -Leik. Utah is confronted with two options. We can answer apathy and observe how the lake disappears, as well as many residents of Utah. Or we can wake up from the danger in which we are. Enter material legislation, offer stimuli for water conservation and appropriate money to save the lake.
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Keeping a large salty lake will be not easy. Utah State University estimates that 33 percent more water should enter the lake every year to reach a healthy water level by the 2050s. This means that Yutan will have to sacrifice. For example, we must stop using municipal water supply-baking from water lawns.
Utah’s agriculture, the largest consumer of water from the lake, should also reduce water intake. This will probably not do it on its own, so the legislative body must take action. Utah’s government should strengthen the rules of water use around thirst as alfalfa, and invest state remedies for water supply from agricultural groups so that more water can flow to the lake.
These actions will be politically charged and economically expensive in the short term. But they will ensure that Utah, its people and its branches last in the future.
I worry that my siblings never know what I know. My little sisters are 10 years younger than me, and much can change in ten years. Will they ever ski the snow on the lake, or turned out to be enveloped in the shiny steps you only see the rowing on the big Salt Lek?
I pray to make them. But moreover, I count on myself and other Utah to take action.
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