Additional monitors will be installed to further study Great Salt Lake dust

SALT LAKE CITY (ABC4) — In a news conference Tuesday morning, Great Salt Lake Commissioner Brian Steed gave updates on the state of the lake, and also announced an effort to better monitor the lake’s dust.

Currently, Steed shared that the lake is lower than it’s preferred to be, however, the lake salinity, which is how much salt is dissolved into the water, is at healthy levels. Salinity can be a concern if it gets too high, which happens when the water is too shallow.

“It’s something we are also monitoring quite carefully because if we have a hot, dry summer with low precipitation, that can drop that into really scary levels,” he said.

Additionally, Tim Davis, the executive director of the Department of Environmental Quality, described a comprehensive plan for monitoring dust at the Great Salt Lake.

That plan includes 19 new monitors, which are set to be around communities that could be impacted by the Great Salt Lake, as well as other potential dust sources, including near the West Desert and the Nevada border. There will be two types — continuous monitors, which will collect data all the time, and filter monitors, which will capture particles to be analyzed following a dust event.

Davis said this is to be able to differentiate sources of dust, what they’re made up of, and inform the public.

“[We want to] develop tools to give people a heads up when a potential dust storm could be coming, and so people who are sensitive, for example, if they have asthma, that they can take steps to protect themselves,” he said.

The first step for this, he shared, is developing a dust network. Davis said it can take some time to put in the monitors, as they’re meant to be permanent. However, the hope is that the project can get its start in July.

“I’ll just say how excited I am for this project. It’s one of the major data gaps we’ve had, honestly, on Great Salt Lake management to see how much dust is coming off the exposed lake bed and what’s in that dust. Trying to figure that out is going to be a key question going forward. And so I really appreciate Director Davis for his dedication to figuring out better data and to have that information available for all of us when we go ahead and make these choices,” Steed said.

Davis shared that they’re planning to gather quantitative data related to dust that will eventually be used in the same system that warns Utahns about unhealthy air quality days.

“The first thing we need to do is just gather the data,” he said. “… We do have some data already on just those potential sources, but we need better data. We need more information about it in order to really characterize it and give people an idea of if there is a risk, what is the potential risks from different sources?”

Gov. Cox also addressed the new monitors in his monthly press conference today, saying that there were dust monitors before, but the state wanted more to understand how the dust shifts and where it could lead to the worst air quality going forward.

“Getting that understanding will help us understand where to invest the most,” he said.