Utah officials sued over failure to save Great Salt Lake: ‘Trying to avert disaster’

Environmental and community groups have sued Utah officials over failures to save its iconic Great Salt Lake from irreversible collapse.

The largest saltwater lake in the western hemisphere has been steadily shrinking, as more and more water has been diverted away from the lake to irrigate farmland, feed industry and water lawns. A megadrought across the US south-west, accelerated by global heating, has hastened the lake’s demise.

Unless dire action is taken, the lake could decline beyond recognition within five years, a report published early this year warned, exposing a dusty lakebed laced with arsenic, mercury, lead and other toxic substances. The resulting toxic dustbowl would be “one of the worst environmental disasters in modern US history”, the ecologist Ben Abbott of Brigham Young University told the Guardian earlier this year.

Copythis,

Just become republican!

All of a sudden, everything bad is a hoax.

Problem solved.

SeaJ,

They should just pray for more rain like the governor suggested.

GlitzyArmrest,
@GlitzyArmrest@lemmy.world avatar

Went through UT earlier this summer and was amazed to see that unlike here in Seattle, all of their lawns were a deep green. In a desert.

Ryumast3r,

Lawns aren’t really the issue for utah. Agriculture uses something like 70+% of the water, and a lot of that is flood irrigation or other inefficient irrigation. The water is mostly used for crops like alfalfa that get exported to places like China.

The governor, unsurprisingly, is heavily invested in alfalfa farming, so do the math.

Wogi,

Utah uses an astronomical amount of water when compared to other states. Residential water use is the single greatest non agricultural use of water in the state. I’m going to go out on a limb and say the green lawns might be a contributing factor.

Agricultural water use is a problem, sure. In a state that has very little water maybe growing plants that need a lot of it is a bad idea. Why wouldn’t this apply to grass as well?

ArmokGoB,

The amount of water used for agriculture makes cutting down on residential use irrelevant.

GlitzyArmrest,
@GlitzyArmrest@lemmy.world avatar

In Utah, it absolutely does not. It takes a massive amount of water to keep lawns, parks, and golf courses green. The amount of ‘green’ space that you’d get from adding up everyone’s lawns isn’t insignificant.

Wogi,

It doesn’t.

70% of the non agricultural water use is residential. Which means residential water use is a little more than 20% of the state’s water usage. Let’s be generous and say that watering yards is only 15% of the state’s total per capita consumption.

15% of an already massively over taxed water system isn’t anything to shake a fist at. It’s even more important when you consider how much more water Utah is using than it’s neighbors, which while difficult to precisely calculate, isn’t a small amount by any measure.

We need food, we don’t need green lawns.

renownedballoonthief,

We don’t need alfalfa to feed livestock if more people went vegan, though.

Wogi,

Ruminants are much more efficient processors of plant fiber than humans are. They also eat a lot of agricultural waste that humans can’t.

To replace the calories lost from meat, we’d actually need *more."

Not to mention that we’d be creating a lot of agricultural waste we can no longer deal with.

No offense if you’re on a vegan diet, but vegan diets are ridiculous. They aren’t the solution they’re purported to be, and most people can’t stay on them longer than a few years before health issues creep in.

Not to mention the swathes of the population that are diabetic or prone to diabetes that require a low carb, high fat diet that can’t be easily done vegan, and can’t be done in a healthy way without animal fat and protein. Not without a lot more nuts and avocados which are, as it happens, huge problems for the environment on their own.

qisope,
@qisope@lemmy.world avatar

Ruminants might be more efficient processors of plant fiber, but the transformation of plant fiber into meat for consumption is a hugely inefficient process.

Wogi,

Meh. Most of it isn’t traveling very far. You’re tilting at windmills now. None of it travels half as far as the bananas you put on your oatmeal, which has also traveled farther to most Americans than cattle feed to most cattle.

There are a lot of processes we could be doing now efficiently. It would be better to eat exclusively locally grown meat and produce and pasture raise every farm animal. It wouldn’t be affordable but it would be environmentally better.

bobman,

I don’t think you’ve been following the science.

I’m not going to sit here and spell it out for you, because it’s a fruitless effort. But know that you’re wrong and the vast majority of the world’s scientists agree.

Ryumast3r, (edited )

Lawn use of water in Utah (by all entities, residential, government, and business) is between 6-8%, half of your “generous 15%” utahrivers.org/are-we-running-out-of-water#:~:tex….

And that use is spread across millions of people. Even if you cut lawn use by 75%, you’re cutting at most 6% of the states use. Or can cut agriculture use by 10% and get a larger reduction in overall water use.

We don’t need alfalfa. We don’t need flood irrigation. We also don’t need Lawns, but that is such a small percentage you might as well tell people to stop flushing their toilet when they shit.

bobman,

Oh look, another ‘come after anyone but me’ kind of guy.

abbotsbury,
@abbotsbury@lemmy.world avatar

You can remove excess from more than one group at a time.

renownedballoonthief,

Alfalfa exports are a small portion compared to domestic livestock consumption. The answer now, as always, is that people should go vegan.

Bayz0r,

And unfortunately that still gets you downvotes, despite being the one contribution practically everyone can make themselves instantly.

Fedizen,

I can’t believe the woke mormon university is once again trying to defame small business agricorps yet again for just hosing down their hogs. /s

jray4559,
@jray4559@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

Yeah, but who’s going to stop the music of growth? Certainly not any politician that wants to keep being elected.

The average person doesn’t really care about sustainable living, they just wanna be able to keep their golf courses and SUV’s and everything else wasteful. If the lake dies, they’ll just take water from further north. Thus, nothing will change, and we lose more and more of our limited freshwater.

lolcatnip,

The lake bed will stop it soon enough.

jray4559,
@jray4559@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

I’d hope for that, but there’s also probably at least a 50/50 chance that Utah strong-arms the federal government into letting them have water from Wyoming and Montana up north. Or, god forbid, they get a Great Lakes pipeline.

expatriado,

should rename the state’s capital to Salt City

bradorsomething,

Salt Flake City

Fedizen,

Arsenic Dust City has a ring to it though

TokenBoomer,

How to sue God

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