{"id":427232,"date":"2026-01-23T03:32:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-23T03:32:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/427232\/"},"modified":"2026-01-23T03:32:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-23T03:32:07","slug":"an-environmental-nuclear-bomb-documentary-examines-fight-to-save-great-salt-lake-sundance-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/427232\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018An environmental nuclear bomb\u2019: documentary examines fight to save Great Salt Lake | Sundance 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Sundance film festival<\/a> kicked off its final edition on Thursday in Park City, the Utah ski enclave that has housed the independent film hub for more than four decades. Beginning in 2027, the festival will move to Boulder, Colorado<\/a>, after a multi-year selection process that many assumed would end in Salt Lake City.<\/p>\n

Utah\u2019s largest city, a mere 30 miles from the festival center, has long hosted extra Sundance events and served as its transit center. It\u2019s a rapidly growing metropolitan area, a mecca for outdoor enthusiasts, a major US city \u2013 and, according to a new documentary that opened this year\u2019s festival, facing an imminent ecological crisis.<\/p>\n

The Lake, directed by Abby Ellis, details the precipitous decline of the Great Salt Lake<\/a>, an \u201cenvironmental nuclear bomb\u201d that threatens the health of the region\u2019s 2.8 million residents. Scientists have warned that the lake, the largest saline lake in the western hemisphere, may fully disappear within a matter of years, leaving a region home to over more than 80% of the state\u2019s population susceptible to toxic dust from the exposed lake bed, unless drastic action is taken to curb water diversion. The lake, often called \u201cAmerica\u2019s Dead Sea\u201d (though it is, in fact, four times larger than its counterpart in the Middle East), hit a record low in 2022<\/a>, having lost 73% of its water and 60% of its surface area from excess diversion for agriculture and other water use.<\/p>\n

To continue on such a path \u201cis absolute insanity\u201d, says Ben Abbott, an ecologist<\/a> at Brigham Young University, in the film. \u201cI don\u2019t think people realize how close to the edge we are.\u201d<\/p>\n

The new film warns, in no uncertain terms, that going over the edge would spell catastrophe for the state\u2019s public health, environment and economy.<\/p>\n

Toxic dust clouds laden with mercury, arsenic and selenium from the desiccated lakebed would increase pollution for a city whose air quality is already worse than Los Angeles, provoking a respiratory and other cancer-related issues. Birdlife and recreation on the lake, already disappearing with its surface area \u2013 now less than 1,000 square miles, down from three times that in the 1980s \u2013 would vanish completely. The lake\u2019s disappearance would inflict billions of dollars of economic damage on the region, imperil the lucrative extraction of minerals from the lakebed, and threaten ski conditions at the numerous resorts in the nearby mountains (including the slopes of Park City, looming over the film\u2019s premiere).<\/p>\n

Olof Wood walks across reef-like structures called microbialites, exposed by receding waters at the Great Salt Lake. Photograph: Rick Bowmer\/AP<\/p>\n

Three years ago, Abbott, along with more than 30 other scientists, co-authored<\/a> a report<\/a> warning that absent major intervention, the 11,000-year-old Great Salt Lake would disappear within five years. The film opens in that dire warning\u2019s present \u2013 salt-streaked expanses of mud where there was once waist-deep water, parched graveyards of pelican carcasses where there were once thousand-strong colonies \u2013 and its aftermath, as advocates urge the Utah state government to attempt a \u201crescue without precedent\u201d. No saline lake on Earth has been successfully restored from structural decline.<\/p>\n

Abbott and fellow scientists point to three ominous comparisons for Utah\u2019s famous inland sea: California\u2019s Owens Lake, which became one of the worst sources of dust pollution in the US<\/a> after its water sources were rerouted to Los Angeles a century prior; Iran\u2019s Lake Urmia, which devolved<\/a> from turquoise tourist destination to toxic, heat-magnifying salt bed in a less than five years; and chiefly the Aral Sea, once the world\u2019s fourth largest lake, which stretched between Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan before Soviet irrigation projects starved it to death<\/a>, leaving shattered local economies, ship graveyards, large areas of salted sand<\/a> and numerous health problems<\/a> in its dusty wake.<\/p>\n

Accepting the dire significance of the Salt Lake data in the age of fake news is one matter; reaching consensus on what to do about it is another. The film traces different approaches to governance and advocacy \u2013 most rooted, as with many issues in Mormon-majority Utah, in religious faith. Abbott, microbiologist Bonnie Baxter and atmospheric scientist Kevin Perry \u2013 all intimately familiar with the collapsing ecosystem and the toxic dust bowl taking its place \u2013 call for a radical overhaul of the state\u2019s water use, which diverts more than 80% of the lake\u2019s natural inflow to agriculture, primarily for water-intensive crops such as alfalfa and hay; state officials such as Brian Steed, appointed<\/a> by the state\u2019s Republican governor, Spencer Cox, as the first Great Salt Lake commissioner, pursues a more moderate approach, seeking compromise with farmers whose livelihoods depend on water access in the nation\u2019s second-driest state, and who feel as though they\u2019ve become the scapegoat for the lake\u2019s decline<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A still from The Lake by Abby Ellis, an official selection of the 2026 Sundance festival. Photograph: Courtesy of Sundance Institute<\/p>\n

Steed\u2019s office makes incremental process on money to buy water back from farmers, yet the changes required to save the lake are so massive, and the straits so dire, that, as Abbott tells him, \u201cwinning slowly is losing\u201d.<\/p>\n

The documentary, which recently<\/a> picked up Leonardo DiCaprio as an executive producer, includes footage from a roundtable with legislators, researchers and advocates, convened<\/a> by governor Cox last September, that publicly prioritized restoration<\/a> of the lake and dedicated $200m of philanthropic funds to the cause. A new charter set 2034 \u2013 the same year Salt Lake will once again host the Winter Olympics \u2013 as the target date<\/a> for \u201creaching healthier lake levels and showcasing Utah\u2019s pioneer spirit on a global stage\u201d.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, the Great Salt Lake, and the many whose lives revolve around it, remain in a precarious position. The Sundance film festival may be leaving Utah (at least, for 10 years), but The Lake maintains a hopeful eye on the region\u2019s future, should the charter\u2019s proposals continue as planned. Saving the Great Salt Lake \u201cis not an impossible order\u201d, Steed says. \u201cThis is not something that we have to sit around and puzzle about. We have an opportunity in front of us.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Sundance film festival kicked off its final edition on Thursday in Park City, the Utah ski enclave…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":427233,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[49,48,75,337],"class_list":{"0":"post-427232","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-movies"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427232","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=427232"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427232\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/427233"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=427232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=427232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=427232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}