Salt water bodies such as the Caspian Sea, the Dead Sea, the Salton Sea and, of course, Salt Lake, have long served as recreational sites and tourist attractions, supported thriving fishing and shipping industries, and were a source of minerals. But these lakes are getting smaller and smaller and more and more salty. In addition to the obvious problems with agriculture, this can lead to health problems such as asthma.
Gradually lowering water levels can render their shores inaccessible to mining, and rising salinity can lead to the collapse of tourism, fisheries and ecosystems, as the species that once thrived in them are unable to survive in such salty water. But perhaps the biggest problem is that as the lakes dry up, fine dust particles are released, which are harmful to agriculture and cause a number of serious health problems, such as asthma, lung infections and other respiratory diseases. To conserve salt lakes two tactics were used. One is the construction of a dam, which creates both a stable surface area and a stable level of salinity that can be maintained. The other is pouring more water into the lakes, which is a tactic being discussed for the Dead Sea.