Environment: Preserving the Great Salt Lake

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Utah struggles to tame a body of water turned outlaw

For three miles beyond what was once the eastern edge of the Great Salt Lake in Utah, cottonwood and birch trees stand in 9 ft. of brackish water, their trunks burned and their branches leafless. Dead wood and decaying, bloated carp litter the shore. Roads are flooded out, towers for power lines sit in muddy pools, and farther south, the famed Saltair resort with its Moorish-style gold domes is shut down.

Roiled since 1982 by prodigious storms, the 30-mile-wide Great Salt Lake has risen 10 ft., its fastest climb ever, overspilling its borders and flooding the land around it. What was once the driest state in the union after Nevada is fast becoming a water wasteland: tens of millions of dollars' worth of property has been destroyed, wildlife has diminished catastrophically, and tourism around the lake has bottomed out. Says Utah Governor Scott Matheson, with tragicomic wit: "It's a helluva way to run a desert."

In an effort to stem the tide of destruction, workers with the Southern Pacific Railroad maneuvered a large crane last week along a 27-mile causeway built of 50 million cu. yds. of rock, sand and gravel that divides the lake into north and south sections. The aim of the engineers: to begin carving a 300-ft. breach in the causeway, the final step in a three-month, $3.2 million project. If they are successful, water on the south side of the lake will fall about 9 in. during the next two months, lessening the threat of floods to Salt Lake City, nearby suburbs, interstate highways and railroads. The north segment of the lake, located in a thinly populated area, could climb as much as 3 ft.

The recent deluge is only the latest crisis in the Great Salt Lake's erratic history. Lying in the Great Basin between the Rockies and Sierra Nevadas, the lake collects runoff from the nearby Wasatch Range. Its only outlet is through evaporation, so the lake becomes 2 million tons richer each year in mountain minerals that have no means of escape. Some parts of the lake can be eight times saltier than the ocean. Perhaps even more remarkable, the Great Salt Lake generates its own weather system, known as the dreaded lake effect (DLE). During early spring, when a storm moves into the area, the clouds over the lake are often colder than the water. As a result, warm air laden with moisture rises into the clouds, intensifying the storm. Normally, the most significant impact of the DLE is to enliven the skiing season with a few extra feet of snow. But in the 1870s the lake swelled to an alltime high of 4,211.6 ft. above sea level. In 1983, April showers followed an exceptionally snowy winter and led to this year's peak of 4,209.25 ft. Larger in an average year than Rhode Island, the lake has grown by 30%, to 2,250 sq. mi. As one Utah meteorologist puts it, "If you compared it to earthquakes, it would be as if you had a Richter scale from one to ten, and the last two years were 15."

With an emergency at hand, the state spent $21 million to raise the interstate highway at the south end of the lake and another $50 million to clean up damaged Salt Lake City. Companies operating at waterside constructed dikes to protect their faculties.