4 ms·

Drying Great Salt Lake could expose millions to toxic arsenic-laced dust

26 points by subharmonicon 4y ago

narrator 4y ago
Wonder how that compares to the dust from the above ground nuke tests in the Nevada desert back in the 40s and 50s. There was a movie filmed in Nevada in the 60s where almost everyone in it got cancer. See:; https://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/jun/06/downwinders-nuclear-fallout-hollywood-john-wayne https://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/jun/06/downwinders-nuc...
tomrod 4y ago
Out of curiosity, how far could this blow? Silt formerly of the Sahara blows to the Amazon. The Aral Sea's former seabed blows across the province. Will Colorado, Wyoming, etc be affected?
- csours 4y ago
  The Great Salt Lake sits in a big bowl, so it normally wouldn't get very far, geologically speaking. It would affect millions of people though.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
irrational 4y ago
Can they cover it over? Like with a tarp weighed down with rocks? I welcome the reasons why this is a stupid idea.
- woodruffw 4y ago
  It would require a very, very large tarp. The simpler solution is to stop drying it out to begin with, but that would require more or less halting extractive agriculture in Utah (as well as much of the rest of the Mountain West).
  - anonymoose33282 4y ago
    And in Utah's case, it's almost exclusively alfalfa. Over half the state's water use, for less than half a percent of its economy: https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/editorial/2022/12/04/why-its-time-utah-buy-out/ https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/editorial/2022/12/04/why-its-...
  - GolfPopper 4y ago
    The Great Salt Lake drainage basin is pretty large - about half of Utah, part of southern Idaho, and Nevada and Wyoming's borders with Utah.[1] But the economic value of that agriculture is small relative to its water use. 82% of Utah's water goes to agriculture, mostly hay, and most of the hay is alfalfa, which accounts for 41% of Utah's water use all by itself.[2] Yet that thirsty hay is less than 1% of Utah's GDP.[3] It's another demonstration of how bad our societal framework is at dealing with spread-out, gradual, externalized costs. It's a failure that I fear is going to painfully wreck us, probably during my lifetime. [1]https://slco.org/watershed/know-your-local-waters/amazing-great-salt-lake/ https://slco.org/watershed/know-your-local-waters/amazing-gr... [2]https://www.utahfoundation.org/2015/05/hay-one-crop-is-utahs-biggest-water-consumer/ https://www.utahfoundation.org/2015/05/hay-one-crop-is-utahs... [3]https://www.fox13now.com/news/fox-13-investigates/fox-13-investigates-utahs-top-cash-crop-is-consuming-most-of-our-water https://www.fox13now.com/news/fox-13-investigates/fox-13-inv...
- Espressosaurus 4y ago
  If a giant tarp would work, we probably would have started with the Salton Sea which is a paltry 350 square miles in area. Of course, you could try covering the 1700 square mile Great Salt Lake with a tarp and then somehow maintaining it.
mythrwy 4y ago
There are compounds that can be sprayed on soil that lock it in place against erosion. It has to be redone every so often or if the soil is disturbed. For instance this: https://fibramulch.com/products/tackifiers/earthbound-scientific/ https://fibramulch.com/products/tackifiers/earthbound-scient... Probably this has been considered, and it would be quiet expensive.
pasttense01 4y ago
We had a major discussion of this from the same original report a few days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34276519 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34276519
- subharmonicon 4y ago
  Hadn’t seen that - thanks for the link to the previous discussion!

26 points by subharmonicon 4y ago

Wonder how that compares to the dust from the above ground nuke tests in the Nevada desert back in the 40s and 50s. There was a movie filmed in Nevada in the 60s where almost everyone in it got cancer. See:; https://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/jun/06/downwinders-nuclear-fallout-hollywood-john-wayne https://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/jun/06/downwinders-nuc...

tomrod 4y ago

Out of curiosity, how far could this blow? Silt formerly of the Sahara blows to the Amazon. The Aral Sea's former seabed blows across the province. Will Colorado, Wyoming, etc be affected?

csours 4y ago
The Great Salt Lake sits in a big bowl, so it normally wouldn't get very far, geologically speaking. It would affect millions of people though.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

irrational 4y ago

Can they cover it over? Like with a tarp weighed down with rocks? I welcome the reasons why this is a stupid idea.

woodruffw 4y ago
It would require a very, very large tarp. The simpler solution is to stop drying it out to begin with, but that would require more or less halting extractive agriculture in Utah (as well as much of the rest of the Mountain West).
- anonymoose33282 4y ago
  And in Utah's case, it's almost exclusively alfalfa. Over half the state's water use, for less than half a percent of its economy: https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/editorial/2022/12/04/why-its-time-utah-buy-out/ https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/editorial/2022/12/04/why-its-...
- GolfPopper 4y ago
  The Great Salt Lake drainage basin is pretty large - about half of Utah, part of southern Idaho, and Nevada and Wyoming's borders with Utah.[1] But the economic value of that agriculture is small relative to its water use. 82% of Utah's water goes to agriculture, mostly hay, and most of the hay is alfalfa, which accounts for 41% of Utah's water use all by itself.[2] Yet that thirsty hay is less than 1% of Utah's GDP.[3] It's another demonstration of how bad our societal framework is at dealing with spread-out, gradual, externalized costs. It's a failure that I fear is going to painfully wreck us, probably during my lifetime. [1]https://slco.org/watershed/know-your-local-waters/amazing-great-salt-lake/ https://slco.org/watershed/know-your-local-waters/amazing-gr... [2]https://www.utahfoundation.org/2015/05/hay-one-crop-is-utahs-biggest-water-consumer/ https://www.utahfoundation.org/2015/05/hay-one-crop-is-utahs... [3]https://www.fox13now.com/news/fox-13-investigates/fox-13-investigates-utahs-top-cash-crop-is-consuming-most-of-our-water https://www.fox13now.com/news/fox-13-investigates/fox-13-inv...
Espressosaurus 4y ago
If a giant tarp would work, we probably would have started with the Salton Sea which is a paltry 350 square miles in area. Of course, you could try covering the 1700 square mile Great Salt Lake with a tarp and then somehow maintaining it.

mythrwy 4y ago

There are compounds that can be sprayed on soil that lock it in place against erosion. It has to be redone every so often or if the soil is disturbed. For instance this: https://fibramulch.com/products/tackifiers/earthbound-scientific/ https://fibramulch.com/products/tackifiers/earthbound-scient... Probably this has been considered, and it would be quiet expensive.

pasttense01 4y ago

We had a major discussion of this from the same original report a few days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34276519 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34276519

subharmonicon 4y ago
Hadn’t seen that - thanks for the link to the previous discussion!