As Utah's Great Salt Lake Dries Up, Economic Crisis Looms | WSJ

I'm dissapointed that this video didn't point out that agriculture is taking 80% of the water runoff from great salt lakes, and a lot of that is growing crops that are extremely poorly suited for our environment here. Alfalfa farmers in Utah are using insane amounts of water to grow a crop that accounts for 1% of our Utah GDP - 80% of the water for 1% of Utah GDP is just a terrible investment. Also when you look at the fact a large portion of the alfalfa is exported to China we are literally destroying the great salt lake and exporting its water to China. Utah's governor is an alfalfa farmer himself so we don't have much hope around here

Turns out running water intensive agriculture in arid environments is a bad idea... who could have guessed?

The annoying thing about watching these videos is people and business owners complaining about an impending disaster but not discussing cutbacks they can make to mitigate the problem.

It's not about raising water prices for regular citizens. The alfalfa farmers use the most water. Two-thirds of all water diverted in Utah go to growing hay (said Gabriel Lozada, professor at UofU), and because farmers buy water rights, they don't have to pay based on consumption.

Utah has an alfalfa farmer for a governor. This ensures the lake's demise.

Scientists have been warning about this since I was a child and I have grey hair coming in. Unfortunately, sometime in the early 80s, we went from a country that could surmount any challenge, to a helpless country that could only address issues if the solutions were profitable enough to a small group of the wealthy. We get what we deserve.

86% of the water supply is going to animal agriculture that only is around 1.9% of the total economy of Utah. Seems like an easy answer

Most of Utahs water usage is from agriculture (82%). This is where lawmakers need to focus their efforts. There should not be as many farms as there are in a literal desert.

I live in the salt lake valley and have done landscaping for 10 years. I personally think that the main offender of water waste is huge green lawn's. So much water is wasted on yards and acres of grass. We live in the desert. We must design our landscapes to fit our climate.

The lake needs water, but nobody wants to take a cut. It's time like these someone needs to make a difficult decision, whether it's scaling back agriculture, or investing in water reclamation. Unilateral action has to be taken soon.

I am sorry to say this and I know there's been generations of farmers in Utah but we have to talk about the fact that over 80% of our water goes towards agricultural needs. We live in a semi desert State there should be some kind of laws to either help them move or the answer here is decreased water to agricultural products let all that water go towards the lake at least for a couple of years so the lake can fill up again

the lakes did not "dry up" they were drained due to overuse/misuse.

The people who care have always cared. The people who don't, never will.

One of the reasons I moved away from Salt Lake City was because that lake is drying up. It's full of nasty heavy metals that will blow across the valley when the lake bed is exposed.

As a Utah native and Salt Lake County resident, it is devastating to have watched this beautiful place be destroyed. I’m in my 50s and looking to relocate. The population growth and housing has absolutely ruined this place.

As a ecologist I've reach out to the senators and governor for utah to address these issues. But they have done nothing to establish a simple process of slowly filling the lake bed with water. This would increase our humidity levels and bring in normal monsoon seasons and heavier snow. So it's time for every utah resident to pressure our elected officials to start filling the lake bed or vote them out of office.

I went to Antelope Island just yesterday. Haven't been out there for probably 30+ years. You could see where the water used to be and it's quite alarming. Small marina as you get to the island completely dry. Oh yeah, it's not an island anymore with that stretch of road being dry for several hundred yards out on the north side

Yet people from other areas keep moving to Salt Lake, just exacerbating the problem. September 7th temperatures were 107° with particulate matter in the unhealthy levels. The future for the area right now is certainly very bleak.

When I was a kid in the 70’s, my parents would take the whole family there for family fun. It was always fun to float around the shores, and it was only knee deep. Now it stinks there, and the brine flies are everywhere. How times change.

Remember when we use to laugh at USSR for destruction of Aral Sea with bad water management and water intensive irrigation for cotton farm? But I guess when America does it for capitalism it's all cool!