Utah’s Great Salt Lake is disappearing - and it could turn the region into a toxic dust bowl

The Great Salt Lake of Utah in the American West is on the verge of becoming an environmental disaster zone, locals warn.

It has already shrunk by two-thirds since the 1980s, from around 8,547 square kilometres to just 2,590, US Geological Survey data from last summer shows.

Climate change and the siphoning of water from its mountain source are behind this alarming evaporation. The population of Salt Lake City has exploded in recent years, meaning more and more of the mountains’ snowmelt is being diverted from rivers to homes and farms.

If the lake continues to dry up at this rate, the ecological and human impacts will be disastrous.

The lake bed’s soil contains a cocktail of heavy metals, which when exposed to wind storms will drive arsenic into the lungs of nearby residents. Three-quarters of Utah’s population would be affected by the poisonous air.

“We have this potential environmental nuclear bomb that’s going to go off if we don’t take some pretty dramatic action,” Joel Ferry, a Republican state lawmaker and local rancher told the New York Times.

A glimpse into the future lies 966 kilometres southwest, the ground zero of California’s Owens Lake. It dried up decades ago, transforming into America’s worst source of dust pollution.

Owens Lake disappeared when Los Angeles built an aqueduct on its tributary in the early 1900s. Even now, the wind still kicks up PM10 - harmful particulate matter 10 micrometres or smaller - which is breathed in by the few remaining residents in the ghost town. It’s a grim precedent for Utah, a haunted picture of what’s in store if the drought and human overreach continues.

Still the largest saltwater lake in the western hemisphere, for now, the Great Salt Lake is at risk of becoming too salty as