If the lake continues to dry out, kids who are now under age six — and those yet to be born — could live their whole lives in dusty, toxic conditions.
(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) Dust blows over the Great Salt Lake on Monday, May 12, 2025.
This past month, Glendale Library hosted an event to teach children about animals that live in and around Great Salt Lake. Volunteers distributed gray-green seagull wings to grade-schoolers who soared and danced around the parking lot in their new “costumes.” As they returned inside, one curly-haired five-year-old happily chatted to a volunteer, “I was a bird! I flew!”
Moments later, volunteers witnessed a huge dust plume engulfing the parking lot where the children had been playing. Storms near the Utah-Idaho border stirred strong winds, kicking up dust from Great Salt Lake’s drying lakebed. The dust blanketed cars throughout Salt Lake County and fouled the air at least as far as Utah County.
Great Salt Lake and its seagulls, beloved by pioneers and children alike, are an important part of our state’s natural and pioneer history, as evidenced in our most famous story.
But today, the drying lake poses a serious health threat. Inhaling tiny dust particles can, over time, lead to diseased lungs, cardiovascular episodes and cancer. The lake’s dust is especially dangerous, as it carries pesticides, fuel byproducts, industrial chemicals, uranium and lead. It also contains bioavailable arsenic at levels known to increase cancer rates among the chronically exposed. As a breast cancer survivor, the idea that cancer rates could increase along the Wasatch Front is extremely concerning to me.
And as a mother of two, I’ve even more concerned. Research shows that the dust threat is even greater to young children. Due to their size and proximity to the ground, children under six years old breathe in and ingest more toxins per pound than adults do. Children can’t vote to change what’s in the air they breathe or the dust coating the slide on their favorite playground. If the lake continues to dry out, kids who are now under age six — and those yet to be born — could live their whole lives in dusty, toxic conditions.
Despite two good snow years and one average year — precipitation levels that climatologists say are likely to become rarer with time — the lake is again nearing historically low levels. At a recent symposium on dust from the lake, researchers Ben Abbott and Kevin Perry reported that up to 1,000 square miles of dry lakebed are currently exposed. Of these, 72 square miles are dust hotspots. The populated areas closest to and most vulnerable to dust events are Ogden, Bountiful, Farmington and West Valley City. However, problem areas extend to Utah, Weber, Summit and Box Elder Counties — home to around 120,000 infants and children under five.
Perry estimates that the lake needs to rise about 14 feet in order to cover a sufficient area to prevent toxic dust blowing from these hotspot areas. Legislative action in recent years has increased the flow of water to the lake by less than 4% of what’s needed. To reverse course, Abbott estimates that we must reduce water consumption in the Great Salt Lake watershed by 30-50%.
Much the same way that Utah doesn’t have unlimited funds to pay for everything its constituents might want, our water “budget” is not limitless. We only have so much water to allocate every year. Right now, we are prioritizing allocation for development, farming and industry at the expense of human health, especially that of children and infants. In addition to polluting our air and soil, a dying lake will threaten our state’s long-term economic stability, obscure our heritage, and devastate natural ecosystems.
We don’t have to imagine what that future could look like. Lake Urmia in Iran serves as a cautionary tale. A 12,000-year-old saline lake once 1,000 square miles larger than ours, it is now set to dry up completely for the second time in three years. The head of the Water Institute at the University of Tehran blames human development. Other environmental experts cite drought and “chronic underfunding, bureaucratic turf wars, and weak enforcement” as contributing factors. As a result of Iran’s political and societal inaction, scientists have tied 41 diseases to the lake’s desiccation, including asthma, leukemia, and developmental delays in children.
We can all learn from these mistakes, changing our habits to help get water to the lake. Individuals and businesses can reduce outdoor water use. Cities can shore up water-saving ordinances and incentives. State lawmakers can fine-tune and fully fund the innovative water leasing legislation they passed in 2023, supporting both farmers and the lake.
Many Utahns, including lawmakers, pride themselves on being fiscal hawks, but we all need to be water hawks, too, finding ways to live within our state’s water “budget.” Our forebearers relied on the natural world but lived within their means. When considering water, we must continue that tradition.
(Christi Leman) Christi Leman is a writer, former environmental worker with Mormon Women for Ethical Government, and member of the Provo Citizen Sustainability Committee.
Christi Leman is a writer, former environmental worker with Mormon Women for Ethical Government, and member of the Provo Citizen Sustainability Committee. She lives in Utah County, and is a cancer survivor and a mother of two. Her opinions are her own.
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