PARK CITY, Utah — January 22, 2026 — The Great Salt Lake, the largest saline lake in the western hemisphere, is facing a potential ecological collapse, a crisis brought into sharp focus by the documentary The Lake, which opened the final edition of the Sundance Film Festival on Thursday.
A Vanishing Lake and a Festival on the Move
Table of Contents
The Sundance Film Festival is relocating from Park City to Boulder, Colorado, beginning in 2027, as a parallel story unfolds of environmental peril in its current home state.
- The Great Salt Lake has lost 73% of its water and 60% of its surface area due to water diversion.
- Scientists warn the lake could disappear within five years, creating a public health and economic disaster.
- The film highlights the conflict between conservation efforts and the needs of Utah’s agricultural industry.
- Leonardo DiCaprio has signed on as an executive producer of The Lake, amplifying its reach.
The documentary, directed by Abby Ellis, details the “precipitous decline” of the lake, which scientists have described as an “environmental nuclear bomb” threatening the health of the region’s 2.8 million residents. The lake, often called “America’s Dead Sea” – though it’s actually four times larger – hit a record low in 2022.
What are the potential consequences if the Great Salt Lake disappears? Toxic dust storms, respiratory problems, economic damage, and the loss of unique ecosystems are all on the horizon.
The Looming Threat of Toxic Dust
“To continue on such a path is absolute insanity,” says Ben Abbott, an ecologist at Brigham Young University, in the film. “I don’t think people realize how close to the edge we are.” The film warns that the lake’s disappearance would spell catastrophe for public health, the environment, and the economy.
Toxic dust clouds containing mercury, arsenic, and selenium would worsen air quality – already worse than Los Angeles – leading to respiratory and cancer-related illnesses. The lake’s shrinking surface area, now less than 1,000 square miles compared to three times that size in the 1980s, threatens birdlife and recreation. Billions of dollars in economic damage are also at stake, impacting mineral extraction and even ski conditions in the nearby mountains, including Park City.
Echoes of Environmental Disasters Past
Three years ago, Abbott and over 30 other scientists co-authored a report warning that, without intervention, the 11,000-year-old Great Salt Lake would disappear within five years. The film opens with stark imagery: salt-streaked mud where water once flowed, and graveyards of pelican carcasses. Advocates are now urging the Utah state government to attempt a “rescue without precedent,” though no saline lake has ever been successfully restored from such decline.
The film draws parallels to other environmental disasters, including California’s Owens Lake, which became a major source of dust pollution after its water was diverted to Los Angeles a century ago; Iran’s Lake Urmia, which rapidly transformed into a toxic salt bed; and the Aral Sea, once the world’s fourth-largest lake, which was effectively “starved to death” by Soviet irrigation projects, leaving behind shattered economies and widespread health problems.
A Conflict Over Water Rights
Finding solutions is proving complex. Abbott and fellow scientists call for a radical overhaul of Utah’s water use, which diverts more than 80% of the lake’s natural inflow to agriculture, primarily for water-intensive crops like alfalfa and hay. State officials, such as Brian Steed, appointed as the first Great Salt Lake commissioner by Governor Spencer Cox, are pursuing a more moderate approach, seeking compromise with farmers who depend on water access in the nation’s second-driest state.
Steed’s office is making incremental progress in buying water back from farmers, but Abbott argues that “winning slowly is losing” given the urgency of the situation. The documentary, which recently added Leonardo DiCaprio as an executive producer, showcases a roundtable discussion convened by Governor Cox last September, publicly prioritizing lake restoration and dedicating $200 million in philanthropic funds. A new charter sets 2034 – the year Salt Lake City will again host the Winter Olympics – as the target date for “reaching healthier lake levels.”
As the Sundance Film Festival prepares to leave Utah, at least for the next decade, The Lake offers a sobering yet hopeful look at the future of the Great Salt Lake, contingent on the success of these ambitious proposals. Steed maintains that saving the lake “is not an impossible order,” and that “we have an opportunity in front of us.”
