Disaster looms, apparently:

https://news.yahoo.com/great-salt-lake-dries-utah-185303576.html?fr=sycsrp_catchall

This isn't the place.

Time to move back to Missouri.

Correction to Rubicon: it's time for the rich Utahns to move "back" to Missouri, while the rest of us are stuck as usual getting sick and dying because Ezra Benson and religious capitalism and no way are we going to let The Government (TM) intrude in our God-given commandment to Get More Money. IMO.

Maybe the church will give you a handcart and a loan you need to pay back.

Utah will be forced to become part of greater Idaho.

You mean Bangerter's pumps are useless?

I forgot about the pumps. How times change

Having no idea what all this 'pumps' business was all about, I asked Google, and was delighted to learn that those three pumps are what Gov. Bangerter is best remembered for!

The article I read said they were first proposed by Gov. Matheson's administration, but they weren't approved and then built until Bangerter's first term in office.

A competing idea to lower the Great Salt Lake level was to detonate a A-bomb at the west end of the lake so as to create a gigantic crater into which all the excess water would flow. But since the exact location of the "lost" ten tribes was unknown, church officials wouldn't allow it.*






*while the A-bomb proposal was real, the church being against it because of possible damage to the "lost" ten tribes habitat is purely made up, on account I thought it was funny. My apologies if it wasn't.

Who knew a church could produce more toxic fallout than a nuclear detonation?

Can't the profit ask the Lord in his weekly chats for more rain in mountains in order to refill the lake?

The environmentalists are saying we need to allow more of the Jordan River and Bear River water to enter the lake instead of shunting it off for agriculture and industrial and residential use. I think they are kidding themselves. There is simply not enough rain falling. They could let all the river water flow into the lake and it would still drop, just more slowly.

Lake Powell is getting so low that it soon may make sense to completely, or at least mostly drain the lake into Lake Mead, so that at least one set of hydroelectric generators can keep working. Who ever thought they would see that day?

you stop running sprinklers in the daytime. The farms waste so much water it's not funny. You can have agriculture and a modern lifestyle you just have to be smart about it. you can have a good looking yard and not waste a ton of water. It's how you landscape.

It's a disaster in the making, not only there, but the greater western US. And it could/should have been addressed years ago, but things like this never do.

Where is Lorenzo Snow when we need him?

I remember as a kid, maybe early 60's, our ward was in dire need of some church house renovation work. The leaders held weekly fund-raising movie nights and charged everyone one fifty cents to come and watch.

One of the movies I remember was The Windows of Heaven. St. George was in one of their Summer droughts that they have every year. Lorenzo Snow was the profit then and made the journey to St. George where had a vision that if the saints would pay tithing, it would rain.

Looks like they need some rain again. Hmmm, I dunno, pay up I guess?

A Rain Dance by the Native - Indigenous folks would be about as effective… Wait, maybe More Effective

just sayin’

Yes, the rains came- about six months later.

And his "revelation" was surprisingly preceded by several visits from the church's creditors.

Additional fun fact: that movie was produced at the tail end of Henry Moyle's chapel building real estate bubble. Look it up.

Perhaps LDS Inc is purchasing vast amounts of land so the 15 and their families will have a place to go once Salt Lake City and the surrounding communities are uninhabitable. They'll take care of themselves first, and then when faithful Mormons are desperate to move, LDS Inc. will sell them some land.

One thing that really bothered me as a TBM was that LDS Inc didn't seem to care about the environment. I waited for a conference talk that told members to recycle and take care of the planet, but that talk never happened.

They have owned 300,000 acres east of Orlando for about 70 years now. They have been peeling off strips for high end subdivisions for 20 or 30 years. They could relocate 50,000 people without batting an eye.

Why not desalinate the Salt Lake?
It’s not that difficult, or expensive.
Australia has been doing it for a decade.

Because desalination would still leave the clouds of arsenic and other heavy metals that are the problem identified in this thread.

The problem is that we are running out of water.

slskipper Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The problem is that we are running out of water.

The world is 2/3 water.
We’re not running out, it’s just mostly either salty or polluted.
Evaporation works great!
Catch the vapor and turn it back into liquid. Store it in snow in mountains, then people would have plenty to drink.
Scrape off the arsenic and mine the heavy metals.

Either that or move someplace that is sustainable, long term.

> Catch the vapor and turn it back into liquid.
> Store it in snow in mountains, then people would
> have plenty to drink.
> Scrape off the arsenic and mine the heavy metals.

You have got to be kidding.

>You have got to be kidding.

Sadly, I fear not.

ditto !

I’m not kidding.
That’s what they did near where I grew up in Tacoma WA, where my Dad worked in the Assrco copper smelter, while it was dumping tones of arsenic into the air every day, which ended up in the soil all over. It ended up being a superfund cleanup site. They had to strip off the top 3ft of peoples yards and replace it with clean soil.
It’s all remediated now.
There’s no shortage of water, just a shortage of political will.
You could drill plenty of wells deep enough to fill the GSL with fresh water, using the pumps they have.

https://ecology.wa.gov/Spills-Cleanup/Contamination-cleanup/Cleanup-sites/Tacoma-smelter



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/12/2022 07:07PM by schrodingerscat.

So you are telling us someone should scrape the arsenic off of the the Great Salt Lake, the Bonneville Salt Flats, Salt Lake City, the waters bringing arsenic out of the mountains?

You reckon Utah could obtain enough water from aquifers, which are shrinking by the day, and then use evaporation to "clean" the water? How would you account for the fact that it is evaporation that is concentrating the heavy metals in the first place?

First, the ASARCO site was 67 acres (~0.1 sq.mi.). The exposed bed of the GSL is currently ~1500 sq.mi. or 4 orders of magnitude larger. The area contaminated by emissions from ASARCO is estimated to be ~1000 sq. mi., but has not all been remediated

https://sites.uw.edu/uwtacomalibrary/2019/05/08/tchp-tacoma-smelter/
"To this day, arsenic, lead, and other heavy metals are still in the soil as a result of this pollution."

The area affected by dust from GSL is certainly larger.

Second, the biggest problem with your suggestion is this:
"Evaporation works great!
Catch the vapor and turn it back into liquid. Store it in snow in mountains, then people would have plenty to drink."

What you are proposing actually happens in the winter - it is known as lake effect snow. The amount produced is not enough to keep the GSL from shrinking. The amount of evaporation in winter is low because of low temperatures. Most evaporation from the GSL occurs in summer.

Regarding doing this artificially in the summer, consider the following questions

Just how do you propose to "catch the vapor" over an area of approximately 1000 sq. mi. to an altitude of several thousands of feet?

If you manage to do so, to turn it back into liquid would require cooling that large mass of air down until it becomes saturated. As noted, most evaporation from GSL occurs in summer when the temperature is 80-100 degrees, and relative humidity is 10-30%.
How much energy will be required to refrigerate that volume of air down to the dew point? How much will that cost? To store it as snow requires lowering the temperature of the produced water to below freezing. How much more energy will that take, and how much will that cost?

Trying to store it as snow in the mountains during summer won't work as the temperature is mostly above freezing then - and you would have to transport it there.

This plan is less practical that the one proposed by several Utahns to build a pipeline from the Pacific Ocean to the GSL.

I’m not an environmental engineer, just suggesting there is no water shortage on a planet that’s 2/3 water.
Desalinating it is no problem. We have plenty of energy, from the sun. There are natural processes that could be used to defuse the environmental time bomb.

I remember the Great Salt lake was flooding in 1983. That's why the pumps were built. Now there higher use of the water and less snow pack. But things change. It's nature.

The main concern is the concentrated arsenic in the dry lake bed. Right now it's got a crust over it keeping it from going airborne. But if that crust gets broken up there will be poisonous winds blowing into the areas east.

it's been known for a long time what resource people would fight over in the 21st Century is potable water. Our own military has the American southwest fingered as a potential hot spot. Water wars and wars caused by people migrating out of the affected areas.

The earth is always changing. It's what it does. If you live long enough you are going to see some change in your lifetime.

Rubicon Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The earth is always changing. It's what it does.
> If you live long enough you are going to see some
> change in your lifetime.


I’m old enough to have witnessed the Nisqually Glacier on the road to Paradise on Mt. Rainier recede up the volcano by more than a mile.

When I was a kid growing up in Western WA, the ponds always froze over solid in the winter and we’d play hockey on them all winter long. Now they never do.

I hate to say it but perhaps it is the destiny of The great salt lake to become just another dried up lake bed
so prevalent in the south west and even up into SE Oregon.

It’s the universe’s way of telling you to move out of that spot of land like wildebeests fleeing the drying up savana.
Time for the desert that bloomed like a rose to go back to being a desert.
Of course Dubai was a desert 25yrs ago.

The Great Salt Lake is what’s left of Lake Bonneville. So you want to talk about change go way back in that lake’s history. It was a lot bigger.

What we see now is what’s left and what’s left is shrinking. Why it hasn’t dried up is there is a lot of snow pack that feeds the rivers that flow into it. If the Wasatch and Uinta mountains weren’t there it would be dry already.

I think it was all prophesied by Jeremiah:

Jeremiah 17:5-6

Thus saith the LORD; Cursed [be] the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the LORD. 6 For he shall be like the heath in the desert, and shall not see when good cometh; but shall inhabit the parched places in the wilderness, [in] a salt land and not inhabited.

Google Earth Engine shows it really well

https://earthengine.google.com/timelapse#v=41.22352,-112.24275,7.34,latLng&t=3.63&ps=100&bt=19840101&et=20201231&startDwell=0&endDwell=0

100 billion buys you a lot of creative engineering.

I suspect if the crunch came the big brass would dig deep to preserve the place.

Or, move ChurchCo HQ to Jackson County MO…

The church re-incorporated itself in Florida. It’s the biggest private land owner in Florida. It could re-locate there but the evangelicals don’t like Mormons. They really aren’t welcome anywhere. They need Utah still.

Water Rights litigation is getting to be a huge bonanza for Western U.S. lawyers.

Always has been.

Utah's Great Cult Lake in the news headlines, fantastic!

The lake existed long before the cult.

Rubicon Wrote:
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> The lake existed long before the cult.

Yeah, but it keeps adopting brand new names!

Lake Bonneville, to Great Salt Lake, to maybe..

Great Cult Lake!

I haven't lived in SLC since 2005. I had no idea that Antelope island wasn't an island anymore.

Salt Lake is screwed.

I wonder how much water is used in all those baptismal fonts in Utah? Both in Temples and meetinghouses, it's all water sent down the drain.

Perhaps there would be a huge water savings if the church re-wrote the baptism ordinance to only require a few teaspoons on the forehead?

"... and then a High Priest spits on the top of your head..."

This article was written with California in mind, but the principle could be applied to other parched areas: capturing waste water and distributing it for suitable non-potable purposes. Back in the mid 1960s, I remember seeing taps around Grand Canyon National Park (rim areas, of course) identified as "NOT FOR HUMAN OR ANIMAL CONSUMPTION." But to water plants, wash cars...?

https://amgreatness.com/2022/06/06/time-to-stop-wasting-wastewater/

HALLE-FUCKING-LUJAH!!!! B'Bye SLC.

Has Russ (conduit from HF) given The Saints & the world Further Light & Knowledge on the matter?

GNPE Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Has Russ (conduit from HF) given The Saints & the
> world Further Light & Knowledge on the matter?

theyalreadyknowwhattodo

Joseph's M¥th Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> theyalreadyknowwhattodo

actually,theyhaven'tafuckingcluewhattodo...



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/14/2022 01:20PM by vzgardner.

This time, I believe, there is no hope. The whole Southwest is approaching empty. No Glen Canyon Dam, no Lake Mead, no rivers emptying anywhere, Las Vegas still building fake oases, Phoenix still growing thirsty fruit crops, California still growing almonds, western ranchers still growing alfalfa, old people still flocking to St. George, and, worst of all, few people trying to use less water. We're gonna have hell to pay. There will be water refugees, to be sure, but maybe also water wars. Much of the fighting will come from crazies who think that the government is behind it.

There is no water shortage on a planet that’s 71% water!
The only problem is it’s mostly salt water.
So remove the salt, or dig deeper wells.

There's no shortage of water in Utah because the Pacific Ocean is full. There's no shortage of energy because the sun is hot.

Is that it?

Eventually, wells hit bedrock. Or chemically contaminated water (usually salt)

Great Salt Lake is running out of salt water, so removing the salt doesn't do a damn thing. There will soon be no salt water to remove the salt from.

And the Pacific Ocean is a minimum of 700 miles away and 5,100 feet downhill. How do you propose getting that water into GSL?

[note: the lowest pass into the Great Basin is near Preston, ID, and is at 5,100 feet]

Brother Of Jerry Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Eventually, wells hit bedrock. Or chemically
> contaminated water (usually salt)
>
> Great Salt Lake is running out of salt water, so
> removing the salt doesn't do a damn thing. There
> will soon be no salt water to remove the salt
> from.
>
> And the Pacific Ocean is a minimum of 700 miles
> away and 5,100 feet downhill. How do you propose
> getting that water into GSL?


May not need to move water, the lightest element in this universe could be moved (pipeline) the long distance and the heavier component could be carried by ordinary wind!

And, mixing the two together again as water (H2O) produces huge huge huge amounts of electricity.

Think of Edison with his very first 'proof of concept' streetlamps in a 50 block area of downtown NYC 140 years ago.

Hydrogen makes water when properly mixed with air.
https://www.utilitydive.com/news/socalgas-begins-developing-100-clean-hydrogen-pipeline-system/619170/

Of course it also takes energy to split water into hydrogen and water. In fact it takes more energy to produce the hydrogen than you can get out by recombining it with oxygen. That's why we don't have a perpetual energy machine powered by just running water around and around the cycle.

A thousand miles of high pressure pipeline doesn't come cheap either, nor does the thousands of acres of solar panels that would be needed, equipment to pressurize the hydrogen, etc etc. Hence my comment about reality below.

Let's also recognize that Utah can't just build, or demand, pipelines across other states. They'll need permission, which will require negotiation with either California or Oregon, and Nevada or Idaho. These other states will want something in return, and they won't accept Books of Mormon as payment in kind.

In any event, the talks will be long, involved and protracted, and (even if eventually implemented) won't solve Utah's water issues anytime soon.

I'm afraid that reality, like Elvis, has left the building.