#1557 The Death of Great Salt Lake

Listening to America

This week, Clay Jenkinson's interview with the Thoreau of Great Salt Lake, Scott Baxter, about the possibility that the lake will die well before it dries up entirely. Baxter has spent decades monitoring the lake as its levels diminish thanks to over-allocation and more recently the prolonged drought in the American West. With his future son-in-law, Baxter circumnavigated the lake several years ago. The toxic dust that is exposed by declining lake levels represents a respiratory problem for the citizens of the Wasatch Front in Utah. That dust finds its way to the snowfields in the mountains east of Salt Lake City, damaging the ski industry and causing the snowpack to melt sooner than ever before. This interview is part of Listening to America's Water in the West initiative.