[lovich]

I think the government views the stinky polluted lake as more of a shield over the pollution that is keeping it from being flung everywhere in the next dust bowl.

We learned as a result of the dust bowl that many aspects of the environment that we thought were useless were actually providing a stabilizing affect on the local environment. This is how we got infrastructure projects like the great shelterbelt[1].

Given this historical context the situation looks like the inverse to me. Like how the hell can the government prioritize keeping an artificial oasis supplied with enough water for a city in the middle of the desert vs prioritizing keeping a man made disaster caused by our ancestors from affecting large swathes of the country?

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Plains_Shelterbelt