{"id":4583,"date":"2026-03-07T23:35:20","date_gmt":"2026-03-07T23:35:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/conservative-politics.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/07\/utah-attempts-massive-great-salt-lake-rescue-project-ahead-of-2034-olympics\/"},"modified":"2026-03-07T23:35:20","modified_gmt":"2026-03-07T23:35:20","slug":"utah-attempts-massive-great-salt-lake-rescue-project-ahead-of-2034-olympics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/conservative-politics.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/07\/utah-attempts-massive-great-salt-lake-rescue-project-ahead-of-2034-olympics\/","title":{"rendered":"Utah attempts massive Great Salt Lake rescue project ahead of 2034 Olympics"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Long-term drought played a role in the lake\u2019s decline, but about 75% of the problem was human-caused, according to research published in 2022<\/a>: People had simply been taking too much lake water for decades.<\/p>\n

State officials got serious about intervention in 2022. Lawmakers created a $40 million water trust to boost water quality and quantity. They changed Utah water law to designate it a \u201cbeneficial use\u201d for farmers to let their allotment flow to the lake, incentivizing donations and water transfers. (Before the change, unused water rights could be lost.) <\/p>\n

State officials also raised a berm<\/a> along a causeway separating the north and south arms of the lake to give them control over the flow of water and salt between the two. Then, fortuitously, twice as much snow fell in the mountains that winter as usual. <\/p>\n

Together, those two factors \u201cbasically saved the lake\u201d by lowering its salinity, said Kevin Perry, a University of Utah atmospheric scientist who researches the Great Salt Lake and its toxic dust.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey filled up and diluted all the salt in the southern part of the lake with that huge snowpack,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

Species returned. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe flies this year were just robust,\u201d Baxter said. <\/p>\n

It was enough to avert crisis \u2014 at least temporarily.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have avoided that environmental nuclear bomb,\u201d said Joel Ferry, director of the Utah Department of Natural Resources. \u201cWe have put the red button away.\u201d <\/p>\n

But the water levels have not returned to health, and this year\u2019s dismal snowpack could renew the problems.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Long-term drought played a role in the lake\u2019s decline, but about 75% of the problem was human-caused, according to research published in 2022: People had simply been taking too much lake water for decades. State officials got serious about intervention in 2022. Lawmakers created a $40 million water trust to boost water quality and quantity. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4584,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-4583","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-current-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/conservative-politics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/conservative-politics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/conservative-politics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/conservative-politics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/conservative-politics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4583"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/conservative-politics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4583\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/conservative-politics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/conservative-politics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/conservative-politics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/conservative-politics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}