Thank you for publishing the column by Leland Myers, former chair of the Great Salt Lake Advisory Council, about the importance of personal water conservation for saving the Great Salt Lake.
The Advisory Council was created by the Utah Legislature to study the declining lake and figure out how to keep it from disappearing. The council’s findings are alarming and suggest that without action by state legislators, the lake could be gone in 20 years.
Mr. Myers didn’t mention in his piece that the Advisory Council’s No. 1 recommendation is to modify the definition of “beneficial use” in Utah water law to allow water owners to retain a legal right to control conserved water, and to protect conserved water from forfeiture. The council’s reports and recommendations can be found on the state of Utah’s website.
If the Great Salt Lake disappears, Utah will lose an important symbol of our state, as well as the lake-effect snows that provide our water and great powder for skiing. The Wasatch Front will be engulfed in toxic mercury-laden dust, and a globally important wetland for wildlife migration will vanish.
The council’s report states that the lake’s steady contraction is putting at risk $1.3 billion in economic activity associated with brine shrimp, mineral extraction and recreation, while the state’s environmental protection officials have warned that the lake’s ecological collapse could lead to economic losses ranging from $1.7 billion to $2.2 billion a year and 6,500 jobs.
Personal water conservation is extremely important in the drought-stricken West, but won’t be enough on its own to save the Great Salt Lake.
This may be the most important issue the Utah Legislature has ever faced. We are counting on our elected representatives to take action now.
Rachel White, Woods Cross
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