GREAT SALT LAKE, Utah — A recent report done by the Great Salt Lake’s ‘strike team’ shows more than hundred square miles of lakebed have been exposed by receding water levels.
The report says resulting dust plumes could threaten both our health and our property values.
When Mother Nature stirs up a windy day, this problem that might otherwise go unnoticed suddenly becomes plainly obvious.
“They’ll see it in the air,” said Tim Davis, who serves as executive director of Utah’s Department of Environmental Quality. “The air won’t be as clear, the sky won’t look as blue or as bright.”
“I mean you’ll even get to the point where you can wipe dust off your car and off your windows,” said Carl Luft, president and CEO of TELLUS sensors.
Dust plumes from the exposed bed of the Great Salt Lake can have an effect many miles away.
“It is highly concerning,” Luft added. “You’re seeing that the dust comes straight off the Great Salt Lake. It blows in through downtown Salt Lake and the nearby communities and that’s something we definitely don’t want to be breathing.”
Tim Davis is also a former deputy Great Salt Lake commissioner and says the number one solution is getting water back into the lake.
“So that’s where the state has focused significant resources - tens of millions of dollars - on how do we conserve more water, dedicate and deliver it to the lake,” Davis said.
Davis points out these particles are largely kept in place thanks to the salt crust that forms around the lakebed. So, part of their effort is identifying dust hotspots where this crust doesn’t exist.
They’re looking at several different mitigation strategies to address those areas.
“There is groundwater underneath the lakebed and where we’ve got a hotspot, that groundwater – some of it, not all of it – is under pressure,” Davis explained. “So if you put in a small well, you may be able to bring up that groundwater to cover those hotspots.”
Meanwhile, they’re also trying to monitor the dust and partnering with the University of Utah to determine just what dangers it can pose.
“We have close to 100 (monitors), starting in the Salt Lake Valley and heading up to Logan,” said Luft.
Carl Luft’s company, TELLUS, is also working with the state to create a network of air quality sensors. Their resulting maps, like this one hosted on FOX 13, aggregate the data to show where the air is at its worst.
“I don’t have an answer, necessarily for the solution,” Luft said. “But as far as the first step of measuring, so you can actually fix something - that’s where we come in”
While state leaders work towards those solutions, Luft says any Utahn can help out by hosting their own monitor.
“The more of these sensors get deployed, the better information we have to map and make predictions of how this air quality is being impacted,” said Luft.
