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Addressing Western US water anxiety through a new
Water Abundance paradigm
"In many human-water systems, water bankruptcy is de facto but not de jure: the system is insolvent, yet institutions continue to behave as if full recovery were possible."
--UNU-INWEH Report: Madani, K. (2026). Global Water Bankruptcy: Living Beyond Our Hydrological Means in the Post-Crisis Era. United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health (UNU-INWEH), Richmond Hill, Ontario, Canada. DOI: 10.53328/INR26KAM001
The Great Basin (Great Salt Lake) and Colorado River Basins are hydrologically bankrupt. Water wars were a thing of the past, but are returning with vengeance. Now, we cannot conserve our way out of a problem we engineered ourselves into as the supplies plunge.
Vision
It takes a new mindset for Utah to become the origin of a new water abundance paradigm within the Great Basin and the West, amidst this worldwide water scarcity crisis. But it can mean not only water abundance and climate resilience, but economic thriving amidst a beautiful and health-giving basin.
Executive Summary
We have a few years of sacrificial water, where aggressive conservation and Solomon-like water-use prioritization can forestall complete GSL collapse to puddles of varying sizes. That paradoxical period will produce dry streambeds where we had otherwise planned on conveying all the agricultural water we had been buying, leasing and coercing--but there won't be any water left to give to agriculture OR to the Lake.
This picture is already playing out in the lower Colorado River Basin where that watershed has also structurally failed and entire canals are drying up. Farms are fallowing NOT because of voluntary or financial incentives, but are going bankrupt because there is not enough water to fill the canal.
Paraphrasing James Carville: It's the megadrought, stupid! ( .... and we are in it for the next tens of hundreds of years...)
After this wake-up period we are in now, we must be busily executing a plan to re-create an hydrologic ecosystem capable of being our Great Basin Climate Modulator. That is, we must have our 4,207' Great Salt Lake air conditioner and humidifier in the otherwise scorching summer, and cold sink and lake effect mountain snowpack multiplier in the winter. It's not just about a failed lake with dust, arsenic, no brine shrimp... ...dead birds. It's about drying mountain lakes, riverbeds, aquifers, and valley wells.
Looking around to see that none of our neighboring states have any water to spare, it is finally about whether there is anyplace better for us to move.
We're not talking about the 5-10 year timeframe while we wake up to what is happening. (Note that 'climate change' makes things worse but that is not even the worst effect we are talking about--this is apolitical) We're talking about the 20-30 year megadrought-intensifying timeframe within the larger context of a ~10,000 year interglacial period, wherein we can still do something about it-- because we will not have given up living here by then, I hope.
Emergency bridging strategy (2026-2034): aggressive, policy- and community- driven water sacrifice.
Permanent solution: Great Salt River (GSR) Initiative is a strawman placeholder built on the Adams Framework for a system of solutions that needs to be vetted, planned, funded, designed and executed. Timeline is existential: Decisions made in 2026-2027 determine whether the lake survives, and we along with it. We use "strawman" because it is only a concept and a vision right now. And it needs more committed minds to analyze, criticize, improve and develop the model to where it can withstand full technical, economic and political scrutiny in order to merit committed and fully funded action.
PDO/PCC model explains ~90% of GSL elevation data since 1990
Water budget model independently predicts identical outcome
⇢ Rapid investment and action is needed
"Piping seawater is NOT too expensive"
"Piping seawater is NOT too expensive"
The Great Salt River demonstrates how nascent technologies make
the Water Abundance economy possible by 2045,
when it was laughable just 3 years ago.
"Observing the essence of a thing and stripping back the messy extraneousness, is the preserve of the single-minded and practiced observer. It is the ability to observe something of great complexity and to discover the underlying simplicity."
--Albert Read, The Imaginative Muscle (2023)
Autonomous Th-Molten Salt Reactors (MSR's) are game-changing because the power costs shift in the ledger from OpEx to CapEx columns. No transmission line losses with point-of-use (POU) placement. And they operate at atmospheric pressure (safe: no kaboom) and very high temperature for optimum thermodynamic efficiency.
There is no new water without abundant, POU power.
There is no new water without abundant, POU power.
Additive manufacturing makes possible near-zero CTE pipes constructed continuously on-site from coal-derived precursor materials. Unlike steel, these do not corrode in seawater applications. We can turn our decimated coal communities into high-tech manufacturing centers.
Aerospace materials applied to pipe making: 50% less cost than steel and lasts 10x or more longer (non-corroding, non-UV susceptible)
Aerospace materials applied to pipe making: 50% less cost than steel and lasts 10x or more longer (non-corroding, non-UV susceptible)
~40% efficient turbines power direct-drive pumps at continuous full load output- optimum efficiency
High efficiency sCO2 turbines powered by high-temp thermal power
High efficiency sCO2 turbines powered by high-temp thermal power
No more dumping toxic brine in the ocean —desalination brine is a valuable feedstock
No more dumping toxic brine in the ocean —desalination brine is a valuable feedstock
Bottom-end MSR heat (after pumping) used to thermally desalinate and distribute fresh water to the proximal community. (Brine pumped on to the next station.) At the last station, highly concentrated brine is feedstock for ecologically sustainable (in-pipe) mineral harvesting producing revenues (e.g., Mg, Li). Salty brine is manageable in Utah. We know salt. We can use it to replenish depleted Salt Flats aquifers, or we can feed it to ponds for evaporative area and table salt harvesting.
There is too much at stake not to engage in a major New Water project
The lake requires too much water not to engage in a major New Water project
Deep Saline wells provide only a stop-gap measure to buy some time to implement unlimited New Water
Seven States (and more?) and Mexico benefit from the Great Salt River augmenting Colorado River flow
Details matter.
Really smart people will know how to manage these, once the vision and the technological means are apparent
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