Hay is sucking the Great Salt Lake dry
New study finds cattle-feed irrigation is primary culprits in water body's shrinkage
🥵 Aridification Watch 🐫
As we traveled, the valley spread into an uncanny immensity unlike the other landscapes we had seen. The roads on the map became a net of dashes, while in the far distance the Salt Lake existed as an interrupted silver band. Hills took on the appearance of melting solids, and glowed under amber light. We followed roads that glided away into dead ends. Sandy slopes turned into viscous masses of perception. Slowly, we drew near to the lake, which resembled an impassive faint violet sheet held captive in a stoney matrix, upon which the sun poured down its crushing light.
— Land artist Robert Smithson’s impression of Rozel Point on the northern Great Salt Lake as he searched for a site for the Spiral Jetty.
About 18,000 years ago, Lake Bonneville spread across about 20,000 square miles of what is now northwestern Utah. It was some 1,000 feet deep in places during its maximum extent, was fed by snowmelt and runoff from the mountains, and discharged into the Snake River in Idaho. Over the millennia, climate change shrunk the lake, leaving behind the Great Salt Lake and vast salt flats — shimmering plains of light and ghosts of that ancient water body.
In 1847, upon seeing the remnants of Lake Bonneville, Brigham Young declared it the “right place” for the nascent Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints to set up its base. Perhaps that was simply because he and his followers were tired of traveling, or maybe he sensed the more-than-passing resemblance to the Dead Sea in the Judeo-Christian holy lands. In any event, the new settlers eventually introduced large-scale agriculture, a rapidly growing population, and industry to the valley — all of which consumed water that would otherwise run into the lake — and eventually the Great Salt Lake began shrinking yet again. In 2022 it reached a record low level, covering just 860 square miles, compared to 2,500 back in the late 1980s.
One culprit is the climate change-exacerbated mega-drought that has dragged on for over two decades. The other is the same infliction that plagues nearly every other Western water body: overconsumption. And a new, detailed accounting of consumption on the lake’s feeder streams finds that the biggest consumer is agriculture, and the crops responsible for guzzling the most water are cattle feed crops such as alfalfa and grass hay.
Though it’s not surprising, it’s always a bit of a downer to be reminded that my Chunky Monkey, green-chile cheeseburger, and yogurt habits are contributing to the depletion of not just the Colorado River, but also the Great Salt Lake.
The new study, “Reducing irrigation of livestock feed is essential to saving Great Salt Lake,” by Brian D. Richter, Kat F. Fowler, et al, and published in Environmental Challenges, builds upon other works, including “Emergency measures needed to rescue Great Salt Lake from ongoing collapse,” by Benjamin W. Abbot et al. The titles say it all: The largest saline lake in the Western hemisphere, which nourishes a rich ecosystem, is a major stop along the Pacific Flyway, and supports some 9,000 jobs and $2.5 billion in economic output each year, is in serious trouble.
And rescuing it, the authors say, will “require a massive transformation of agricultural production in the basin, particularly in cattle-feed production. Failure to implement the agricultural adjustments needed to arrest the decades-long decline of the lake will lead to serious and escalating threats to regional-scale public health, a continental-scale migratory flyway, and global-scale shocks in seafood production.”
The new study’s findings include:
“The lake’s shrinkage is attributable to anthropogenic consumption of 62% of river water that would have otherwise reached and replenished the lake.”
The Great Salt Lake reached its highest level in more than a century in 1987, following a series of extremely wet winters, but has been dropping by about four inches per year on average since then. From 1989 to 2022, the lake lost 10.2 million acre-feet and the surface level dropped 14 feet.
Lake shrinkage is bad for human health because it mobilizes dust containing toxic heavy metals such as arsenic, copper, lead, zinc, cadmium, mercury and other metals, many of them from mining runoff.
Great Salt Lake is the world’s largest supplier of brine shrimp eggs, a key food source for the aquaculture industry. As the lake shrinks, salinity increases, stressing the brine shrimp and lower production.
The lake is a crucial nexus within Pacific Flyway, and the birds eat brine shrimp and brine flies. Wilson’s Phalaropes and Eared Grebes are threatened by the decline of GSL, and they could be listed under the Endangered Species Act, which could impact industry around the lake.
Aggregate water consumption from both anthropogenic and environmental (riparian evapotranspiration and lake evaporation) sources exceeded lake inputs from river inflows and direct precipitation by 309,664 acre-feet per year on average from 1989-2022.
Irrigated farms now cover 791 square miles within the basin, with 70% of the acreage dedicated to growing cattle feed crops. There’s also public land grazing leases, which cover more than half of the 21,000-square-mile Great Salt Lake basin and provide additional forage for about 10% of all cattle in the basin.
The 2022 U.S. Agricultural Census counted nearly 1 million cattle within the basin; about 70% were beef and 30% dairy.
Alfalfa farms within GSL basin produce an average of 3.7 tons per acre, for a total of 951,889 tons per year, or a little over half of all the alfalfa grown in Utah.
Alfalfa water use per year is estimated at 617,034 acre-feet and other hay use 291,695 acre-feet, for a grand total of more than 900,000 acre-feet (or about 57% of all anthropogenic uses in the basin).
About 38% of the cattle feed grown in the basin stays in the basin, with about 25% exported to the Snake River basin in Idaho, and 13% going to California, the nation’s leading milk producer. An estimated 17% is exported internationally, primarily to China and the Middle East.
Cattle feed crops in the basin produced an estimated $162 million in cash receipts in 2021, or about .07% of Utah’s GDP. But alfalfa prices jumped about 85% between 2000 and 2021, mainly driven by rising demand from dairy as Americans eat more yogurt and cheese. That makes alfalfa a more lucrative crop for its growers, and ceasing production would have an outsized local impact.
Currently the lake is suffering from an annual water deficit of about 310,000 acre-feet. But researchers believe the strains of climate change will keep driving the deficit higher, and point to the need to bring the lake back up from its diminished levels. Some are pushing for up to 1 million acre-feet in consumption cuts per year, but Richter and company are suggesting a more politically palatable 650,000 acre-feet per year. Still, that’s a boatload of water.
So how to get there? Once again the obvious solution — stop growing alfalfa — is also the most contentious, and far more complicated than it appears. The economic impact would be devastating locally, and would also change the communities’ cultures. Farmers tend to hold the most senior water rights, meaning they legally can continue to use that whatever however they please. And paying farmers to fallow that much land would not only be prohibitively expensive, but also would create other problems, such as dust and noxious weed proliferation.
The authors present a range of less drastic, but still ambitious — and painful — options, including:
They found they could reduce crop water consumption by 91,500 acre-feet per year by replacing alfalfa with winter wheat. Split-season irrigation, or reducing the number of cuttings from three to one, could save another 477,130 acre-feet (but would reduce alfalfa and hay production by 61%).
Combining split-season irrigation and partial fallowing could achieve the 650,000 acre-feet target, but it would cost $76 million per year for foregone alfalfa production plus $21 million for reduced grass hay production.
If the municipal and industrial and mineral extraction sectors cut consumption by 20%, it could reduce the deficit by about 110,000 acre-feet, leaving agriculture to pick up the remaining 550,000 acre-feet through the above strategies.
Temporary leasing of agricultural water rights would cost as much as $423 million annually, but would give farmers more flexibility over what they do with the land (and it would only be temporary).
“Ultimately the debate about whether to save the GSL will be about cultural issues, not economics or food security,” the authors conclude. “The potential solutions outlined here implicate lifestyle changes for as many as 20,000 farmers and ranchers in the basin. In this respect the GSL serves as a microcosm of the socio-cultural changes facing many river basin communities in the increasingly water-scarce wester U.S. and around the globe.”
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No use finger pointing. We'll be doing that until the sun burns out. I don't care how it's happening so much as that it's happening. All over the West the saline lakes are drying up- not only the GSL but lesser known lakes like my state's Lake Abert. Two obvious solutions. Dam up the outflow and/or Increase the inflow. Both difficult. The real solution is one people don't want to address: humans and their herds get out of the West and let the rivers and lakes shift for themselves! Kind of extreme I admit, but how else are we really gonna fix this mess?
I drive through the great Salt Lake Valley a couple of times a year on my way to Pocatello and I can't even image the economic and social devastation on that area if there were restrictions on growing animal feed. By the same token, SLC has become the Silicon Valley of the west. That too takes a lot of water in the manufacturing of chips. There are no easy answers, but I get the impression that there is a growing movement toward solving the problems instead of blaming "people caused climate change". If you have DishTV, try watching the RFD channel and see exactly what the ag business is doing to solve these never ending problems. Happy New Years!