The Great Salt Lake is the largest saltwater lake in the Western Hemisphere and the eighth-largest terminal lake in the world. For 13,000 years, the Great Salt Lake has existed with no outlet to the sea, her large salt deposits left behind through evaporation. Lately, evaporation from heat and drought accelerated by climate change and overuse of the rivers that feed it have shrunk the lake’s area to almost nothing.
A recent report indicated that if nothing changes, the Great Salt Lake will dry up within 5 years. Given the vast ecosystem the lake sustains, it would severely impact much of the West and even the world if it were to disappear altogether.
However, there have been some very positive changes thanks to the recent extreme snow in Utah. It’s Mother Natures’ way of giving us a little more time to try and find a solution! With record snowfall in Utah this year, the precipitation falling directly in the lake has returned the water level to where it was last year instead of dropping as it has in years past. When the snowpack melts, it will cause the water levels to rise even more. Hopefully, it will melt slowly, so the melt will turn into groundwater instead of just running over the surface.
While we can’t count on weather like this every year, it nonetheless buys us another year to try and find solutions and improve water resource control and management. At PPS, we can’t control the weather (as much as we wish we could). But we are doing everything we can to provide water conservation solutions like Clarity WMS ® that will improve water resource management through remote monitoring, water use analysis, and control of irrigation pumping system efficiency. But we will be the first to say THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU, to wonderful Mother Nature! And admit we can use a little help from HER to get us by while we figure it all out. Go PPS Pride!
Click here to learn more about the Clarity Water Management System, now available from PPS.
Click here to read the original articles used for reference in this blog post.
