Water Wars: Mormons Vs Las Vegas

[Thinking]

Just now, Calm said:

Where was he from?

Utah. He thought that all of California was under a blanket of smog.

[Calm]

Oh my word.  Some people shouldn't be allowed to leave their house on their own.

[nuclearfuels]

On 3/8/2015 at 10:02 PM, BCSpace said:

 

 

Seems to me that one should establish water rights and resources before one builds.

That's not how it works. See the Big Short

[nuclearfuels]

On 3/10/2015 at 7:18 AM, thesometimesaint said:

 

The power needed to transport the water would far exceed the power generated by the water falling. There is no free lunch in physics. The Sea of Cortez is a much easier prospect. However large scale(About 20 million people) desalinization is still an unresolved issue.

Very true.

Waiting for UT to desalinate the Great Salt Lake. 

Might move back then...after the inversion is also removed.

[Calm]

2 hours ago, nuclearfuels said:

Very true.

Waiting for UT to desalinate the Great Salt Lake. 

Might move back then...after the inversion is also removed.

Might not be much use for it for very long, half its size from 1847. 

https://www.newsdeeply.com/water/articles/2017/12/12/why-the-great-salt-lake-is-shrinking

Rather than desalinate, why not just take the water before it gets there?  Less work. 

Edited September 16, 2019 by Calm

[JarMan]

On 9/16/2019 at 3:09 PM, Calm said:

Might not be much use for it for very long, half its size from 1847. 

https://www.newsdeeply.com/water/articles/2017/12/12/why-the-great-salt-lake-is-shrinking

Rather than desalinate, why not just take the water before it gets there?  Less work. 

The Great Salt Lake is not drying up. This is a myth being propagated for political purposes.

And you’re right that capturing the water before it gets to the lake is much more efficient. 

[Calm]

2 hours ago, JarMan said:

The Great Salt Lake is not drying up.

Cfr please. I know it fluctuates a lot, but understood long term comparisons. 

Edited November 3, 2019 by Calm

[JarMan]

6 hours ago, Calm said:

Cfr please. I know it fluctuates a lot, but understood long term comparisons. 

There are three main rivers that feed the Great Salt Lake: the Jordan, the Weber, and the Bear. To understand what's happening with the Great Salt Lake you have to start with historical flow records for these three sources. The most telling is the Jordan River. We have good records starting in 1943. Since that time the flow from the Jordan River to the Great Salt Lake has essentially doubled. The reason is pretty simple: urbanization. There are really three factors that come into play with urbanization and surface water availability. First, when you change land use from irrigation to cities and towns, less water is depleted. So there is a net gain in water in the streams. Second, hard-scape (roads, parking lots, rooftops) create runoff where vegetation would have consumed the water. And third is the use of wells to supply municipal use. Something like 90% of water used indoors returns to the natural system after it has been treated. By using wells for homes, the net result is that water from the ground is added to surface supplies. Salt Lake and Utah Counties are both tributary to the Jordan River and the urbanization in these areas has caused surface flow to the Great Salt Lake to double. This has occurred despite the fact that Jordanelle Reservoir was brought online in the 1990's.

If you look at the Weber and Bear Rivers you'll see a little different story, though, over roughly this same period. On the Weber River, there has been a lot of water developed since 1943. This has caused the outflows to the Great Salt Lake to decrease over this time period. However, no more water is being developed from the Weber River. What we now have is urbanization occurring, which for the same reasons as explained above, is actually creating more outflow to the Great Salt Lake.

That leaves us with the Bear River, which is the main source of water for the Great Salt Lake. This is a little bit harder to pin down since it passes through three different states and I'm not as familiar with land use practices in Idaho and Wyoming (though Wyoming only accounts for a small portion of the drainage). What we can tell from the hydrologic records, though, is that, at worst, the flow from the Bear River to the Great Salt Lake is decreasing by about the same amount as the flow from the Jordan River is increasing. So if they offset each other then we can look at the Weber and see that urbanization in Davis and Weber counties is causing the flow to increase. A more realistic look at urbanization in the Bear River drainage, I think, will show us that the amount of decrease in flows from the Bear River is actually smaller than the amount of increase from the Jordan River.

What has likely occurred since 1847 when pioneers first came into the valley was a period of over a hundred years where water development did cause less flow out to the Great Salt Lake and declining lake levels. However, as agriculture has given way to cities and towns, at some point this trend started to reverse. I haven't studied it closely enough to know exactly when this trend started to reverse but my sense is that it has been at least twenty years and perhaps as many as forty. The low lake levels we had in 2016 were primarily from prolonged drought. The lake has risen since then with wetter than normal years in 2017 and 2019 (though 2018 was dismal). But even with prolonged drought the lake levels are self-correcting. As the lake level comes down, so does the amount of evaporation. This happens because the surface area decreases and evaporation is the only way for water to leave the lake. Also, as the lake shrinks salinity increases which also results in less evaporation. The exact opposites occur when the lake levels rise.

This is probably a longer answer than you wanted, but the reality is that there are not a lot of published studies. The one recent study you cited is quite flawed, and really shouldn't be relied on. In fact, I've spoken to the primary author on the study and he has essentially admitted as much.

[Calm]

Good to know, thank you. My husband who is from Orem explained it in pretty much the same way.