SALT LAKE CITY — More monitors will be installed in communities around the Great Salt Lake to better track and warn people about dust, the head of Utah's Department of Environmental Quality said.
At a news conference on Tuesday with Great Salt Lake Commissioner Brian Steed, Utah DEQ Executive Director Tim Davis announced a plan for 19 new monitors, mostly in communities impacted by blowing dust. That could also feed into an alert system to warn people if they're particularly sensitive to dust. That is expected to happen by the end of the year.
"We need better data. We need more information in order to really characterize and give people an idea, if there is a risk whatever the potential source is," Davis told reporters.
Locations are also being looked at in the West Desert and the Utah-Nevada border to help determine if it's really lake dust or coming from somewhere else. Sometimes people have raised concerns about dust blowing off the shrinking Great Salt Lake, when it's really coming from the West Desert or the Sevier Dry Lake bed.
It's an issue FOX 13 News has documented extensively. Powerful winds pick up dust from the shrinking Great Salt Lake and blow it into nearby communities. Research is still being done on what's in the dust, but the lake bed contains naturally-occurring minerals, some of which can be toxic (like arsenic).
Meanwhile, the Great Salt Lake Commissioner (tasked by political leaders in Utah with enacting a plan to save the lake) urged people to curb their outdoor water use. FOX 13 News reported last week that the Jordan Valley Water Conservancy District and Salt Lake City Public Utilities had documented a jump in outdoor water use.
"It's scary," Steed said. "We all need to change behaviors."
This article is published through the Great Salt Lake Collaborative, a solutions journalism initiative that partners news, education and media organizations to help inform people about the plight of the Great Salt Lake—and what can be done to make a difference before it is too late. Read all of our stories at greatsaltlakenews.org.
