How Much Would It Cost To Pump Ocean Water Into The Great Salt Lake?

_{By Richard Provost}

Turns out, pumping just one third of the water we need to save the Great Salt Lake would require 400 megawatts of electricity. For reference, that’s 11% of the energy the state of Utah uses in a single year.

In a new study from the Ira A. Fulton College of Engineering at Brigham Young University, BYU engineers have analyzed how much energy and money would be required to save the Great Salt Lake by transporting water in from the Pacific Ocean through a single large-diameter pipeline.

In addition to using 400 megawatts of electricity, it would also require $300 million dollars a year to operate (on top of the multibillion-dollar cost to build a pipeline) and would emit nearly one million metric tons of carbon dioxide (or 200,000 passenger vehicles) each year. BYU’s Todd Hollingshead reported that these are very conservative estimates. The pipeline would have to pump water 600 miles inland while gaining 4,200 feet of elevation.

“The figures could easily triple with a longer pipeline route, mountainous terrain, higher flows, multiple pipelines or less efficient pumps,” said Rob Sowby, BYU professor of civil engineering and lead author on the analysis. “To put it mildly, there are serious challenges to this approach.”

TLDR: we’d save the Great Salt Lake but would worsen our inversion problem and incur serious financial costs.

Sowby worked on this analysis with BYU professors Gus Williams and Andrew South. “While the idea sounds extreme, so are the circumstances, some argue, and all options should be kept open,” Williams said. “That said, we’re not providing an opinion on the necessity or feasibility of such a project; our analysis is to inform Great Salt Lake stakeholders, decision makers and the public on what the costs could be.”

“After years of neglect, the Great Salt Lake is starving not just for water but for attention,” Sowby said. “Facing an environmental crisis, we are compelled to rethink our relationship with the Great Salt Lake, to treat it like the precious asset it is rather than as a casual afterthought.”