Just because your cancer seems to be in remission doesn’t mean you can go back to that two-pack-a-day smoking habit.
And just because the Great Salt Lake now appears somewhat healthier than it did two or three years ago doesn’t mean the great engine of our local ecosystem is out of danger.
Public and private efforts to keep the Great Salt Lake from further decline are still necessary. Any false reassurances we might now hear from such worthies as Utah Gov. Spencer Cox must not lull us into an undeserved sense of relief.
The lake does not have to totally disappear for its decline to do great damage to our economy and our already dangerous air quality, as a drying lake bed releases tons of dust containing toxic substances.
Humans will not be left unharmed by the threatened disappearance of the plants and animals that thrive in the lake and its wetlands.
Utahns have been faced recently with differing predictions as to what might happen to the lake in the foreseeable future. To the degree that the future is foreseeable.
One report released in early 2023, from a group of scientists at Brigham Young University, warned that the decline of the lake had been so precipitous in recent years that, if nothing changed, it would practically disappear in as soon as five years.
But, guess what? Something changed. Two winters of heavier-than-anyone-had-any-business-expecting snowfall partially recharged the lake.
Also, in part motivated by the shock of the BYU report, the Utah Legislature shook off years of its laissez-faire attitude toward the natural world and started passing measures designed to cut down on the amount of water that gets diverted to municipal and agricultural uses rather than flow on to the lake.
Centuries-old rules that forced people with water rights to consume the water or lose their future claims were amended to allow farmers and other to hold those rights even after choosing, from time to time, to let the water flow onto the lake. Many millions were spent on plans to better measure water use and create conservation plans.
Plans to build more dams along the Bear River tributaries to the lake were properly abandoned. Cox froze applications for any new water rights applications. Lawmakers became properly skeptical of some of the mineral extraction operations that drain the lake.
But any sense that the job is done and the hazard has passed is totally unjustified.
Cox, especially, is out of line mocking the BYU report and other warnings as “a joke” and unhelpfully alarmist.
Even the governor seems to know that is not true. His own budget proposal sets aside $34 million for water conservation and management. That includes $16 million to match federal and private sources to lease more water rights for the lake.
The governor (or whoever wrote the budget document) also recognized the link between the lake’s health and the quality of our air.
“Wind-blown dust poses an emerging risk to Utah’s health and air quality,” the budget rightly says. “Gov. Cox recommends investing $651,100 to better understand and mitigate this concern.”
Cox unhelpfully went off on the experts, chiding them for overstating the problem and not communicating the nuance of most scientific research — the inherent uncertainty that goes with even the most learned predictions of the future.
But even if the general public doesn’t get the nuances of science, one would expect such responsible people as the governor of a state to take it in his stride and lead his constituents to necessary action.
The fact that some of the variables changed does not mean the BYU report was wrong. Those who wrote it would have been remiss in their duty if, after running the undeniable numbers, they had not let the public know the direction those figures were pointed.
The American West is still in the grip of an ongoing drought and the full effects of ongoing global climate change have yet to be felt or even fully understood. It is delusional to expect another “snowpocalypse” to ride to our rescue.
The fact that climate change is beyond our immediate control does not justify surrender, but demands that we make more aggressive use of the tools that are available to us.
Schemes to reward farmers for using less water have not been significantly adopted, as there is no faith that water not used by one operation won’t just be soaked up by the next, leaving no benefit to the lake.
Money appropriated to create a system of air quality monitors downwind of the lake has not been spent and our knowledge of just how toxic the increased amount of dust is seriously lacking.
It is, as the governor may argue, wrong to shout “Fire!” in a crowded theater.
Unless, of course, the theater really is on fire.
