TRACEY: I feel like when I first was drawn to them, it was a mixture of this sort of curiosity about catastrophe—I was reading about the Salton Sea, which has this really up and down, strange history, which is different than any other salt lake’s history—but also really aesthetically drawn to the lakes. It’s just amazing when you come across a salt lake with bright blue water in the desert. It’s very striking—the sort of greens and whites and purples that often surround them are really beautiful because they appear in the desert that has a more muted kind of palette. I think the initial interest came from a mixture of those two things.

These are kind of the canary in the coal mine for the Western water system. Because if the endpoint is in such bad shape, that means that, very soon, the whole system is.

MYSKOW: Something unique about this crisis on the Great Salt Lake is that so much of the conversation around it centers on the environment and the health impacts the lake drying up would have for both humans and other species. That’s not something talked about nearly as much on similar water issues, like the Colorado River, for instance. Why do you think that is?

TRACEY: Maybe it has to do with the fact that saline lakes are the end point of the system, rather than the system itself. If you are thinking about what is beneficial for Utah’s economy, it’s the snowpack and the water in the rivers and the Great Salt Lake is sacrificed so that that water can be used. Saving the lakes is asking people to benefit less.