This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

Are toxic algae blooms the harbinger of a changing planet, or the consequence of Utahns not cleaning up after themselves?

The answer may be both. Either way, the blooms are telling us we have to do better with our water. With the population growing and climate change expected to reduce the snowpack, Utah is facing up to water's true costs, and the price is going up.

It won't be as simple as it was in the past when we just built more dams and canals to solve our water issues. This is about using what we have more efficiently, and cleaning what we use more effectively.

Is it unkind to call Utah Lake a sewage pond? Yes, but it's not entirely wrong. In 2010, more than 13 percent of the water flowing into the lake had come out of eight municipal sewage treatment plants. By 2050, that is expected to be more like 25 percent.

The water coming out of the plants is "treated," but that is not to say you'd want to drink it. It still has elevated levels of nutrients, particularly phosphorous, much of it from human waste.

Now add the fact that not as much melted snow is making it to the lake. There will be year-to-year variations, but the long-term prediction is for that to continue. That means the lake is more shallow and the nutrients are more concentrated.

Let it stand in the sunshine, and you have the perfect recipe for algal blooms.

The Utah Division of Water Quality wants to clean up that sewage-plant discharge, which requires costly retrofitting. But even that may not be enough to stop the blooms because the lake has become so shallow. The science, like the water, is clouded, although removing more nutrients from sewage discharge is likely to have other positive effects beyond bloom reduction.

In the meantime, we would be helping the health of Utah Lake and other waterways if we could let more water flow unimpeded. That's not simple, either. The pioneers built their society on delivering cheap water for agriculture and growing families, and we've been diverting it for well over a century. We're not walking away from that, but we can't keep walking in the same direction, either. We can't just develop our way out.

The solution to algal blooms and beyond will require us to balance competing interests, including protecting the ecosystem. To do that we'll have to spend more money to better manage existing water sources and to better clean used water. In other words, the algal blooms are further sign that Utahns should value their water more. One way or another, they will be paying more for it.