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Between 1963 and the 1900s, the water level of the Great Salt Lake in Utah, which has long been an iconic sight in Utah, was suddenly reduced by 25 feet to the 1970s.
The rate and magnitude of the lake's decline far outstrips the environmental factors of the Great Salt Lake, what is going on?
Where does the water go when it is lost?
The 13 billion liters of lake water in the United States disappeared in an instant.
There are many salt lakes in the United States, but the most famous is the Great Salt Lake in Utah, which is the second largest saltwater lake in the United States after California, and the reason why local residents use the Great Salt Lake as a reservoir on their doorstep is mainly because part of the snow water from the Little Snow Mountains and Wasatch Mountains in Utah flows into the salt lake, and the other part flows into the Great Salt Lake Basin in central Utah.
The area of the Great Salt Lake is decreasing, around 1963, the area of the Great Salt Lake is relatively large, but also relatively shallow, less than 100 square kilometers, the lake water has occurred three times in a sharp decline, the most serious one was on May 1, 1973, the area of the Great Salt Lake directly reduced by 50 square kilometers, the lake water almost disappeared.
On this day, Nikko Tom Brinson, a researcher who did not know about the volcano, suddenly received a call from a rancher who said that the 13 billion liters of water in the lake of one of his cattle farms had disappeared in an instant, and the local residents were very scared, because the 1,800 square kilometers of water in the Great Salt Lake would disappear at any moment like sand and dust swept up by the wind.
Researchers who did not know about the volcano, Tom Brinson, and the staff of the U.S. Geological Survey conducted an investigation and found that the Great Salt Lake was much smaller than before, but they did not find any traces of the lake flowing underground.
The water level of the Great Salt Lake has dropped dramatically.
The Great Salt Lake is mainly fed by the Colorado River and the South Dakota River, and many of the local residents rely on the salt lake for their livelihood, the salinity of the Great Salt Lake is very high, three times the salinity of the seawater, and the adaptability of different species of fish is different, so the locals have their own fishing methods.
The salinity of the lake water after the Colorado River enters the lake is the highest, and the local residents are catching conch to sell for money, and the salinity of the South Dakota River after entering the lake is very low, so the fish in the Great Salt Lake are very delicious, Colorado Salt Lake City and raising small fish, South Dakota is a paradise for raising big fish, but since 1974, the water of the Great Salt Lake has drowned all the fish in the South Dakota River, and there are many animals and plants on the water that have died.
These things made everyone very panicked, and the local government felt that someone might have poisoned the South Dakota River before, so after poisoning the fish in the South Dakota River, they might go directly to the Great Salt Lake.
Ever since 1973, when Colorado Salt Lake had a large-scale, unknown water pollution incident along the banks of Perrick Creek, the Colorado Salt Lake Environmental Protection Agency has been sampling and testing the water quality of groundwater recharge pipes to provide domestic water for residents.
For nearly half a year, the Environmental Protection Bureau has not been able to find out where the source of the pollution in Colorado Creek Creek is on the groundwater recharge pipeline, and finally the staff suspected that it was a problem with the water quality inspection equipment, and conducted an inspection, only to find out that the source of the pollution in Birek Creek was in the underground pipeline from under the municipal landfill in Colorado Salt Lake City.
After washing the pipeline through a high-pressure water gun and cleaning up the garbage on the pipeline, 3,000 remnant fish were put into the upper reaches of Birek Creek, and after 70 days of observation, it was found that none of the residual fish died, but after reaching the downstream of Birek Creek, there were no more fish in the sewage, which also confirmed that the Environmental Protection Bureau of Colorado Salt Lake City suspected that it was a problem with water quality inspection equipment.
However, not long after the workers sent the water quality testing equipment to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for inspection, the water of the Great Salt Lake was highly toxic, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency never found any problems with the water quality testing equipment in Birek Creek.
It turns out that the groundwater recharge of Birek Creek has been transferred from the alkali salt lake to the groundwater reservoir, and the salinity of Birek Creek has been very low for so many years, but the salinity of Birek Creek is many times higher than that of the Great Salt Lake, and the salinity of Birek Creek is still rising, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency found a lot of needles and two alloy rods in the upper reaches of Birek Creek, and someone in the local area drowned the dog and threw the needles and alloy rods into Birek Creek.
The EPA conducted an investigation of the source of the pollution in Billik Creek, and found a large amount of snowmelt water from the Wasatch Mountains in the upper reaches of Brerk Creek, so the EPA asked the Environmental Protection Bureau of Colorado Salt Lake City to change the sewage discharge of the groundwater recharge pipeline to the lower reaches of Brerek Creek, but just two days later, a large number of dead fish appeared in the sewage downstream of Brerac Creek.
EPA staff brought the water quality testing equipment and test bottles for the groundwater recharge pipeline back to Colorado Salt Lake to test the water in the two places, and found that the drowned fish in the sewage downstream of the Brerac Creek were pressed to shore because the water in the water was too salty.
Where does the lake go?
The groundwater recharged by the Breke Creek seeped into the Great Salt Lake, and the salinity of the lake water rose in a straight line, which also made the Great Salt Lake extremely dangerous, and the decline in the water level of the Great Salt Lake was not only due to the salinity, but also a big reason was that human beings began to transform the Great Salt Lake about a century ago, in order to improve the characteristics of the land and water, so the Great Salt Lake began to be transformed in 1940.
The Colorado River has the highest salinity after entering the lake, and President Kennedy desalination the water after entering the lake, and the desalinated water is directly drained to Texas, but in New Mexico, they found that there are two kinds of fish in the water source of Texas that are salt lake fish, which originally lived in the Colorado Salt Lake, but it took them nine years to discover that the water that did not enter the Great Salt Lake in the Colorado River dropped sharply from the original 9.1 cubic meters per second to 2.5 cubic meters per second.
This is the biggest crime they have committed in destroying the ecological environment and changing the area of the salt lake, which has greatly reduced the degree of desalination of the Great Salt Lake, but the fish put into the salt lake are still alive and well, but the area of the Great Salt Lake has shrunk a lot, which is a counterattack against human beings and has not brought benefits to human beings.
It wasn't until 1973 that the water level of the Great Salt Lake dropped sharply, and some cracks appeared in the eastern part of the Great Salt Lake, and the staff of the U.S. Geological Survey found that the water of the Great Salt Lake flowed through the cracks from above to the ground, which caused many rivers in the area to break down, but the U.S. Geological Survey and the Environmental Protection Agency of Colorado Salt Lake City only knew that this was due to the pollution of the groundwater recharge pipeline, which caused the salinity of Birek Creek to rise, and did not find that the water in the Great Salt Lake had decreased so much.
After the loss of water from these lakes, it flowed to the western part of the United States, the biggest reason is Billik Creek, since the groundwater recharge of Beacon Creek flowed to the Great Salt Lake, the water volume of the salt lake has decreased by 1.3 trillion liters, and the Environmental Protection Agency of the United States has also conducted an inspection of the salinity of Beacon Creek, and found that the salinity has always been very high, but they don't know that the ingredients of these fish are only after they die, not because the salinity of groundwater recharge is high, but because the salinity of the Colorado River is already very high after entering the lake.
epilogue
The lagoons in the United States are almost all flowing out of the groundwater recharge, although these lagoons are small, but they are also unique to the United States, is the unique scenery of the United States, and these lagoons are also the country's rural scenic spots, environmentalists have been calling for everyone to protect the ecological environment of the lagoon, do not damage the ecological environment, otherwise there will be a series of problems like Colorado Salt Lake City.