Community forum held on toxic dust from Great Salt Lake, government considers options

SALT LAKE CITY (ABC4) — A local nonprofit organization hosted a community forum Thursday evening to address the public’s concerns about the Great Salt Lake, as Utah is facing intensifying drought conditions and the lowest levels of the lake in the past two years.

Grow the Flow

is a local nonprofit organization focused on restoring the Great Salt Lake. They hosted the community forum, featuring ecologist Dr. Ben Abbott, who is a professor at BYU and also the executive director of Grow the Flow, and Dr. Kevin Perry, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Utah and an expert on Great Salt Lake Dust.

The lower water levels will only make the drought worse, as it reduces precipitation and pollutes the air. The lakebed has high levels of toxic pollutants like arsenic and heavy metals, and as more of it is exposed, the risk of toxic dust storms increases.

“There are around 120 of these large saline lakes around the world,” Abbott said in an interview with ABC4.com. “Almost all of them are in decline, and there’s not a single example of a lake once it’s slipped into decline being restored, and we want our community to be the first, and one of the real assets that we have is Utahns care about Great Salt Lake.”

While multiple factors are contributing to the decline of lake levels, the biggest one is local water consumption, and that’s actually a good thing, Abbott said at the community forum. Because it is local water use, that means that we actually have control over it, and we can come up with a solution. If it was something like climate change, that would be less in our control.

Dust from the Great Salt Lake will be deposited onto agricultural fields, reducing soil fertility and damaging crops, and we’re already starting to see that happening, Abbott said. The dust will also make snowmelt happen earlier and earlier, which will also have a large impact on agriculture.

“This is already impacting our lives, and the world is watching,” Abbott said.

Abbott said that we need to reduce the amount of water we use by a third to a half in order to get the Great Salt Lake back to where it needs to be, but he believes that is possible.

The state is exploring options besides just conservancy, including a pipeline to the Pacific Ocean and building up the berm around the lake, but those options will take time, even potentially decades. Abbott is confident that the lake can be saved through conservancy.

According to Alexa Musselman with the Utah House of Representatives, Speaker of the House Mike Schultz has asked Governor Cox, State Forestry Fire, and State Lands to look into the benefits of raising the berm around the Great Salt Lake. If it would be beneficial, Speaker Schultz will reportedly encourage the governor to add it to a special session call or to consider legislation during the next station.

Utah Senate President J. Stuart Adams said in a statement to ABC4.com, “Utah is currently experiencing a severe drought and heightened wildfire activity. The safety of Utahns and firefighters remains a top priority. As we take action to address these challenges, I support extending the wildfire emergency and evaluating raising the berm along the Great Salt Lake as a measure to address declining lake levels.”