Great Salt Lake water levels dropping dangerously low again

SALT LAKE CITY — Utah’s hot, dry weather is bringing back serious concerns about the Great Salt Lake. Water levels are again dropping dangerously low, and those managing them tell KSL TV it’s a problem that all of us need to address.

The Great Salt Lake Commissioner Brian Steed provided an update on Tuesday morning. He compares the lake to layers of cake. If the top layer is good, and the next is okay, then bad, and really bad… that’s the edge of where the lake levels are right now.

Looking at the water, the lake is sitting at 4,192 feet above sea level, which is three feet below what Steed said it should be.

“We’re sitting at a scary low level,” Steed said. “Because we’re sitting about where we were, we’re trending into those lowest levels we’ve ever seen in 2022.”

So, how concerned should we be? Steed doesn’t think this year it’ll drop as low as it did three years ago.

He said salt levels are healthy and reservoirs are too, but they’re dropping fast, and it’s time to start talking about conserving water.

“We are in a drought; this drought is the real deal,” Steed said.  “Honestly, if we don’t get it right, we’re going to overuse, or continue to overuse and we’re going to have real human consequences, part of those consequences is a desecrated Great Salt Lake.”

If the lake drops much lower and exposes the lake bed, it disrupts the ecosystem like affecting brine flies, the birds that eat them, spiking salt levels and more.

In short, it’s scary. Steed believes it’ll take all of us to turn it around.

“We all have to understand it’s all of us working together on this, and it’s our problem, it’s not their problem,” Steed said.

Steed said projects are happening at the state level to better manage the water. They’re also getting better at collecting data to know the difference all their steps are making, but even the little bit of water you save will help, too.

Related stories: Millions of gallons of surplus water gushes into the Great Salt Lake