Watch this panel discussion on YouTubeThe Great Salt Lake has shrunk to the lowest levels ever recorded. Utah's journalism community has responded by combining resources to cover the story together as the Great Salt Lake Collaborative. Newsrooms that normally compete are sharing stories about the lake—and embarking on joint reporting projects to discover what solutions exist to the problem of drought, climate change, and over consumption of water in the West. A team of reporters from the Collaborative recently traveled to California to learn how communities around Owens Lake and Mono Lake responded to the crisis facing those lakes. Loss of in-flows turned Owens Lake into a dust bowl and the largest source of dust pollution in the United States. Mono Lake faced the same fate until a nonprofit secured its right to exist.
The panel will cover what the reporters learned about how Utah could mitigate dust from Great Salt Lake's dry lakebed, the lessons Utah could learn from the legal fight for Mono Lake, and how the communities around Owens Lake and Mono Lake are finding solutions to mitigate the loss or reduction of those lakes. How (if) we can apply the lessons learned in California, what the obstacles might be here in Utah, and potential solutions as we grapple with the shrinking Great Salt Lake.
Learn more in the Great Salt Lake Collaborative's
"At Water's Edge" story map, which illustrates the challenges at Owens and Mono lakes and how they can inform the future of the Great Salt Lake, as well as the
full series of articles and reporting.
