Water encroaching on 'Jetty'

BRIGHAM CITY — The rising waters of the Great Salt Lake this spring have begun to swallow up one of Utah's best-known artifacts: Robert Smithson's remarkable earth sculpture, the Spiral Jetty.

Over six years of drought, the curious have flocked to see the 1,500-foot-long salt-encrusted spiral that was constructed in 1970 with backhoes out of basalt rock and earth. The drought provided unprecedented access to the jetty, which for decades was submerged just out of sight under the salt-laden lake waters.

Now, after a winter of record snow, water levels of the Great Salt Lake are climbing and changing not just the view and access to Smithson's art, but many things about this mysterious desert oasis and its unique ecosystem.

"Change in lake levels can produce significantly more of a change than you'd expect," says Maunsel Pearce, chairman of the Great Salt Lake Alliance, a consortium of conservation groups with interests in the lake. "You really need to see it to believe it."

Sandbars exposed during the drought are now covered with water. Wetlands that had dried into sheets of cracked-mud and thinning dry grasses are now soggy marshes sprouting thick vegetation.

Water is also inching back toward Antelope Island, although boat docks there remain beached. And at the south end's Great Salt Lake Marina, dry-docked sailboats now seem destined to return to their salty slips.

In an average year, the lake elevation hovers around 4,200 feet above sea level and spreads out to cover about 1,700 square miles, according to data kept since 1875 by the U.S. Geological Survey.

But the drought that began in 1999 shrank the lake to just 950 square miles and lowered its elevation to about 4,194 feet.

The flush 2005 water year so far has raised the lake level to just under 4,198 feet. The annual seasonal rise is projected to peak mid-June at a little more than 3 feet, said Greg Smith, a hydrologist for the Colorado River Basin Forecast Center in Salt Lake City.

"It's almost double the average rise," said Smith. "That's probably noticeable to people who watch the lake. We haven't seen a wet spring in a while, so it's much more dramatic."

Such fluctuations are in part what makes the lake beautiful, says Lynn de Freitas, executive director of Friends of the Great Salt Lake. Each climate pattern changes the lake and people's perception of it, she explains.