Solar glints off elements of the Owens Lake Mud Mitigation Program, which makes use of shallow flood, brine swimming pools and different “finest obtainable management measures” to scale back blowing mud on the dry lakebed in Inyo County, California, on Wednesday, Aug. 10, 2022. Spenser Heaps, Deseret Information
- Like Owens Lake, the Nice Salt Lake is a terminal saline lake within the Nice Basin. The basin covers greater than 200,000 sq. miles and is beneath duress. However not like Owens Lake, which dried up in 1926 on account of diversion of its tributaries, the Nice Salt Lake stays half full and nonetheless has a preventing probability.
- The mud attributable to the dried-up Owens Lake in California created the nation’s worst supply of PM10 air pollution, resulting in federal regulatory controls and an in depth monitoring system. There isn't any such framework in place for the Nice Salt Lake, though officers acknowledge blowing mud off the uncovered lakebed is an issue. A lot of the uncovered lakebed of the Nice Salt Lake is a tough crust which, except disturbed, is a far much less ominous downside than Owens Lake.
- The Nice Salt Lake, the most important saline lake within the Western Hemisphere, is 12 occasions bigger than Owens Lake in California. The sheer scope of the issue attributable to a dying lake in Utah has the potential to enormously eclipse what occurred in California.
- Each lakes are remnants of the ice age and are a part of a loosely related community of 20 saline, terminal lakes within the Nice Basin that's bounded on the east by the Wasatch Entrance, and the Sierra Nevada and Cascade ranges to the west.
- There's a smattering of small cities and communities impacted by Owens Lake air pollution, affecting an estimated 40,000 folks. In distinction, 2.6 million Utahns — a lot of the state’s inhabitants — reside alongside the Wasatch Entrance and are weak to a dying Nice Salt Lake.