148 The Great Salt Lake and the Bear River in Crisis: A Holistic Analysis

Forty-eight km3 of groundwater doesn’t get up and walk away. This means that the pumping of groundwater has exceeded the recharge rate of Great Salt Lake tributaries to an extreme amount. Along with surface water exploitation, i.e., the creation of canals and dams, groundwater exploitation is a problem more pervasive and much less visible. Groundwater overexploitation lowers the water table, which makes it harder to return surface water elevation to its previous level because it needs to recharge the water table first. It also has deleterious effects on nearby plants, depriving them of water they previously had access to. This causes the ground to dry up, being more vulnerable to large seismic events. Notably, in this paper the authors find that seismic events happen more during dry years. This entire process is dubbed an externality, and is much less regulated then surface water within the court of law. You can pump groundwater until the well runs dry, and the fact that will cause untold environmental, economic, and human health damage is acceptable to the status quo.

These data also highlight some extremely alarming trends in groundwater loss and associated crust-deformation in the area within and around Great Salt Lake. The research found that due to surface and ground water loss, the crust of the Earth around the entirety of Great Salt Lake has risen up to six mm.12 This finding and its related affects are unknown to us at the present moment, highlighting a need for further research on the effect of crust deformation. 

The researchers used GPS data and ground surface imaging programs to analyze how the crust of the Earth itself has responded to a shrinking GSL. Water has weight. A lot of water has enough weight to deform the crust of the Earth so much that its visible on a satellite. Since Great Salt Lake is so expansive, fluctuation in its water level affect the crust of the Earth to an impressive amount. Without meaning to, we’ve raised up the Earth 6mm. Moving an incredible amount of Earth by overusing the surrounding water resources. The consequences of these actions are understudied and require more investigation. Suffice to say that due to the interconnected nature of all things, the surface of Great Salt Lake shrinking results in a series of problems, all interlinked and coinciding, some of which are obvious to us than others. 

Research published in the Journal of Ecological Restoration taking place at the Columbia River tests the effects of artificially recreating wetland conditions, and how an environment can heal with the help of humans. In certain colonized agricultural lands along the estuary of the Columbia river, several logs were artificially placed with the intention of recreating the historical forced-step pool morphology of the estuary before colonization. 13 The resulting beneficial effects on salmon and water chemical composition urge us to consider how we can effectively restore extensible modified biomes to create a more robust and resilient ecosystem. 

The GSL and its tributaries are responsible for one of the largest wetlands in any desert. This wetland has been subject to much exploitation and land use change due to the colonizing and the ever-expanding process of capitalism. Currently, there is both a prison and an inland port being built upon Great Salt Lake wetland, the philosophical implications of which are outside of the scope of this paper. The more tangible process going on is that the land being destroyed. The ground is drying up and the biome created by the trees and the grasses and soil is being destroyed, resulting in a drier climate and the inability to retain water. Negative things are being done to the land, which result in negative consequences. This paper shows, however, that they can be restored and healed. Featureless stretches of fallow farmland can be restored to healthy marshlands, swamps and estuaries.

This research also took into account the local and preexisting beaver dams that were within the scope of lands they were restoring. Evidence of cohabitation of juvenile salmon within beaver dams and their associated pools highlights how ecosystem processes of one animal can be beneficial or even necessary for another.14 These findings want us to consider how and why an environment acts in the way that it does, in a more holistic way. It would be unfair to try and talk about the restoration of salmon habitats without mentioning the boons that beavers provide to salmon. 

So far, this paper has only explored the science side of viewing this entire picture holistically. Just as important is exploring the socio-political and economic history of Bear River watershed. Historically, the Northwestern Shoshone tribe has lived upon this land, until 1863. This history is barely acknowledged within our discussions about the Great Salt Lake, yet it incredibly crucial to discuss if we want to have a chance at fixing the problems we have caused. On January 29, 1863, the Bear River Massacre was done to the Shoshone people by the California Volunteer Infantry.15 The purpose of the massacre was “to make the roads and trails of Utah Territory secure to travelers.” The history of this place reveals the horrifying legacy of settler colonialism within Utah and the Bear River watershed specifically, and how these historic injustices must be approached and redressed to have Great Salt Lake and Bear River stay alive and whole.

If we are to view an ecosystem holistically and concede that the human presence has an effect on the river and the lake, we need to address the historical human presence in and around Bear River. One of the most important historical events to happen in the Cache valley was Bear River Massacre. It was a purposeful stealing of land and murdering of people to open up an area for exploitation, and the descendants of the people who stole that land still live there. Settler colonialism and the historic injustices have never went away, the legacy and sociopolitical consequences of those actions are still affecting us, even if a small parcel of land is now owned by the Shoshone people and deemed a historic site.16 The legacy of settler colonialism can be seen in the elevation of Great Salt Lake.

This legacy can be seen not just in historically low levels, but in historically high ones as well. Taking the historic high of 4,211.85 feet in 1987, which was deemed a crisis by the governor at the time.17 This is a topic Terry Tempest Williams explores in her book, Refuge. We can see the presence of Lake Bonneville, Great Salt Lake’s ancestor all around us, the Shoreline Trail around the Salt Lake Valley, the notches carved into mountains as the lake carved its huge and winding path. A historic flooding event like the one in 1986-7 could have been prepared for in some way, though such methods are outside of the scope of this thesis. This is to say, the way the Salt Lake Valley was settled and transformed left the state completely unable to rapidly and meaningfully respond to the crisis. As Williams writes: 

“What would happen,” I asked, “if the governor said, ‘I’ve decided to do nothing. Great Salt Lake is cyclic. This is a natural phenomenon. Our roads are built on a flood plain. We will move them.’ ” I looked at my father. “He’d be impeached,” Dad said, laughing. “The lakeshore industry is hurting financially. The pumping project is a way to bailout the salt and mineral companies, Southern Pacific Railroad, and a political career as well.”18

The west desert pumping station is one more marker of the presence around Great Salt Lake. Erected in 1986, it was the states effort to control Great Salt Lake, rather than let it do what it has done for time immemorial. The lake cannot do what it has done, because the economy is built on the basis of denying the reality of Great Salt Lake. It cannot be cyclic, wild or real, lest industry suffer. On the one hand, we see how the current settler-colonist regime handles this historic high, and on the other, we have the words of Darren Parry, in his lecture Voices from Dust: A Shoshone Perspective on the Bear River Massacre. “We traveled to different areas when the game was plentiful and the berries and seeds were abundant.” If somewhere wasn’t a nice place to live, like a flood, they would get up and leave. An ability and perspective that has been totally lost today. If there’s too much water in Great Salt Lake, pump it out, if there’s not enough water, ship it in from the Pacific Ocean.19

This is a nested issue, water rights in Utah. Due to the prior appropriation doctrine, leaving water in Bear River is simply not an option. All water rights have been divvied up for Bear River, and in order for a given consumer to maintain their water right, they must prove the water is being put to “productive use.”20 In the letter of the law, this means some sort of consumptive use, like agriculture or a municipality.21 Leaving the water in the river, if you had a water right, would mean your right is forfeit. Putting water towards agricultural use does not consume all of the used water, some of it percolates back into the ground and is returned to the river. According the Statewide 2021 Water-Related Land Use Inventories in Utah, published by the Utah Department of Natural Resources, all agricultural land along the length of Bear River is farmed using irrigation (sprinkler/flood) methods.22 The Statewide 2021 Water-Related Land Use Inventories in Utah also includes a detailed listing of every single parcel of agricultural land, and what it is used for. Along Bear River drainage basin, this is broken down into >1,900,000 acres, and >95,000 individual parcels counted.23 Alfalfa, comprising 291,645 acres and 28,370 individual parcels, is the most popular agricultural use, and will be further explored below.24

Bear River basin streamflow is 799806.55 acre-feet.25,26 Using the diversion calculated from Lozada’s report, alfalfa production diverts 2.12 acre-feet of water per acre harvested.27 Of note, agricultural use is not 100% consumptive of water diverted, in fact it diverts a great amount more than 2.12 feet of water per acre, around five feet of water per acre, due to inefficiencies in growing and irrigation. The 2.12 number is the theoretical minimum amount of water alfalfa consumes in the growing process, which is entirely consumed. This, in Bear River basin, accounts for 618,287.4177 acre-feet of water diverted for alfalfa production, just in 2020. Since Bear River basin flows through and is diverted by three different states, there is no clean estimate for the revenue produced by this region. We can however, take other numbers to provide an estimate of the value produced. In 2020, the National Agriculture Statistics Service (NASS) reported that the average yield of alfalfa in Utah was 4.1 tons/acre, with a revenue of $298/ton.28 Thus, the total value of all alfalfa grown in Bear River basin in 2020 was $337,211,624.5. Including manufacturing costs at a rate of 45% of total revenue lowers total profit generated by alfalfa farming to $185,466,393.5.29 One would assume farmers pay for the water used in production, but certain legal stipulations mean that farmers on the whole do not pay for the water used in production.30, 31 One acre-foot of water thus produces $299. If farmers were charged $0.00091 per gallon of water used, alfalfa farming becomes unprofitable. As a token example, the cheapest price of residential water is $0.0022 per gallon. If farmers were charged equal to the cheapest residential user, alfalfa warming would become wildly unprofitable. If the alfalfa farmers were compensated to do nothing at the same rate, just leave the water in the river, it would cost every Utahn $34.32 To subsidize the entire profit generated by all hay farming Bear River Basin, it would cost every Utahn $88.33.

This is to imply that the crops grown in Bear River Basin are not integral or otherwise a key component of the food system of Utah, and that their non-production would not be adversely detrimental. If they were, then despite the clear financial/environmental/health incentives to not grow these crops, we would be forced to grow them anyway, in order to prevent a crisis in feeding the population. If that were the case, the best-case scenario I could argue for would be to conserve and minimize water consumption, rather than the case of not use it at all. Regardless, the crops grown in Bear River Valley are not integral to our system because a large percentage of them are exported, and the tremendous amount of food waste inherent in the system.

One, the fact that crops are exported. This is fact is plainly evident. All of the crops that are exported elsewhere represent only profit to the farmers, and are not integral to Utah’s food system. In 2020, 29% of all Utah hay was exported.34 This percentage represents exclusively turning water into cash, by shipping it out of state. This percentage entirely could be safely removed without worrying about long-term effects to Utah’s food system, and would bolster Great Salt Lake by a charitable 0.44 feet, or about five inches.35 Two, the inherent amount of food waste in the system already. As hay is used as livestock feed, not as a direct to consumer good, it is difficult to measure precisely how much of it is wasted in the food system. A 2014 estimate from the USDA finds that 28% of meat products end up unconsumed as waste.36 Assuming the remaining 71% of non-exported hay goes towards feeding livestock, that accounts for 19.8% of the total hay grown in Bear River Valley ends up unconsumed, as waste. This would raise Great Salt Lake by 0.28 feet, or about three and a half inches. This, together accounts for 48.8% of the hay grown in Bear River Basin being entirely irrelevant to the healthy and proper functioning of our food system. Just these two facts alone account for almost half of the hay grown, and this percentage could be reduced further by converting the hay to a crop eaten by people, to reduce the inherent waste in trophic levels, or various other means of more efficient agriculture.

This, to be clear, is not an issue to be hoisted directly onto agri-business, As NASS reports that 95% of farms in Utah are family farms, which are defined as “any farm where the majority of the business is owned by the producer and individuals related to the producer.”37 This is a cultural and historical problem, tracing its origins back to the settlement of the American West, and for Bear River, the Bear River Massacre on 1863. Land was stolen and settled by individual families, and those families on the whole, have not gone anywhere in the proceeding 160 years. The Northwestern Shoshone haven’t gone anywhere, either. There is obvious tension here, and one that exists outside of numbers and lake elevation. This holistic view includes something, that on the whole, Utahns have forgotten. Take one of the two plaques erected at the Bear River Massacre Site, the one from 1932 reading:

The Battle of Bear River was fought in this vicinity January 29, 1863. Col P. E. Connor, leading 300 California Volunteers from Camp Douglas, Utah, against Bannock and Shoshone Indians guilty of hostile attacks on emigrants and settlers, engaged about 500 Indians of whom 250 to 300 were killed or incapacitated, including about 90 combatant women and children. 14 soldiers were killed, 4 officers and 49 men wounded, of whom 1 officer and 7 men died later. 79 were severely frozen. Chiefs Bear Hunter, Sagwitch, and Lehi were reported killed. 175 horses and much stolen property were recovered. 70 lodges were burned. — Franklin County Chapter, Daughters of the Utah Pioneers, Cache Valley Council, Boy Scouts of America and Utah Pioneer Trails and Landmarks Association. 

This is the history that farmers in Bear River have chosen to remember. Combatant women and children. This is the history that has given us a drying lake and a governor telling us to pray for rain. Not only do the legal and economic aspects of water in Utah need a systemic change, the culture and lens with which we view the history, legacy, and responsibility of those living there today need one as well. Let us not forget that ten years after the massacre, a Mormon missionary baptized the 102 members of the Northwestern Shoshone in Bear River, an incredibly potent metaphor for the white-washing, obfuscation and forgetfulness of history under the Mormon regime. There is injustice here that needs rectifying. 

So far, I’ve been showing examples of how things are related, the cause and effect between two things. Sometimes it’s obvious, like the case of beaver dams being nice places for fish to live in, and sometimes it’s more subtle, like the overexploitation of groundwater leading to the crust elevating and earthquakes happening more.38,39 All of these things aren’t just related to things I’ve described, they are related to everything else. A system as infinitely complex as a river and its terminus is going to have a thousand cascading effects on all of things it passes by and flows over, and all of those things are going to affect the river right back. By analyzing all of them, together, we get a clearer picture of how little we understand and how extensive our actions are. This is a holistic view of Great Salt Lake. We must emphasize the importance of the whole and the butterfly effect one thing can have on everything else. This process of holistic analyzing doesn’t end with our economy and the environment, (e.g., how does building the inland port effect the surrounding water table? What about mosquito populations?) it considers history and ongoing socio-political process. The Massacre at Bear River and the areas’ subsequent colonization can be seen in the water elevation of Great Salt Lake. Will our governor address that and try to remedy it? No, the best he can do is tell us to pray for rain.40

The fact that viewing this GSL and Bear River systems holistically would be a great boon and a potentially politically radical shift in thinking can be seen as the thesis, and the antithesis is the fact that institutions of power currently rely on the negation of that information to continue over-exploiting the water and land to great economic benefit. A synthesis of this dialectic could be this: Overhauling the current GSL managing institutions within the government to instead be both co-managed by the government of the Northwestern Shoshone, and expanded from just Great Salt Lake to the entire Bear River watershed. It has to be managed for protection, and as little use as possible. There is some inkling of this idea already being seen in Bear River. There is Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge, which is a protected and undeveloped area of 299 km.41. The Northwestern Shoshone purchased Bear River Massacre site, in 2005. Then, currently are fundraising and planning efforts to both build the Boa Ogoi (Wuda Ogwa) Cultural Interpretive Center.42 A meaningful improvement on the two lackluster plaques erected there already, and one that won’t be erasing history. In addition, the Northwestern Shoshone have begun working with Utah State University to restore the site to how it looked in 1863.43 This is a fascinating concept, very much in line with a holistic overview of Bear River. Tying ecology into history, creating a historical document in the plants and animals living in Bear River Basin, could and should be the start of a more robust analysis of the entire watershed, and one that synthesizes everything discussed here. 

A potent combination of both of these ways of protecting the land, native ownership and US government exercising power, can result in tangible protecting for the water and the land. And hopefully one that will be seen soon in the Boa Ogoi Cultural Interpretive Center. This idea quite obviously steps on the toes of the farmers and agribusiness rewidening there, but as it stands, they will kill us all if they continue to rule over the hydro-geologic regime unchecked.44 None of the water from Bear River even reached Great Salt Lake in 2020 for four months.45 Every single drop got appropriated. If none of the blood reached your brain for four months, you would be dead. The best time to act was in 1863, the second-best time is now. Go see the lake, agitate for change, destroy a combine harvester, give all of your money to the Shoshone, whose land you are currently living upon.46

CONCLUSION 

In sum, treating and managing Bear River Watershed and Great Salt Lake holistically is beneficial because it will protect the health of all the interrelated and reliant ecosystems; and protect the health of humans living in and around these ecosystems. Most importantly, incorporating the socio-political history of the Northwestern Shoshone tribes who lived here and the settlers that expelled them let us acknowledge and begin to repair some of the wrongs done to the Shoshone people whose land we are living upon and that I am writing about. Of all the problems currently being faced in society, this one we can actually stand up to and fix in a speedy and timely manner. We can’t pull CO2 out of the atmosphere and solve climate change in a day, but we could sign over land rights back to the Shoshone, and Great Salt Lake could be filled back up before we know it, increasing snowfall, reducing asthma and making our world a richer and more robust place to live. If we don’t, we will all have to live on arid, dead land, chocking on arsenic laced dust and praying for rain in January.  

Bibliography