Editor's note: This is adapted from our weekly, free newsletter from March 21, 2025. You can subscribe here.
Dear readers,
Some good news I heard yesterday: It appears money will be found to pay for more dust monitors at the Great Salt Lake.
As you may recall, the Utah Legislature in the session that just ended declined to fully fund Gov. Spencer Cox's $651,000 request to pay for staff and dust monitors. Tim Davis, the executive director of the state's Department of Environmental Quality, said Thursday he will use the $150,000 funded by lawmakers to pay for a staff member, who will address dust concerns around the state.
He said the Great Salt Lake Commissioner's Office (where he was deputy commissioner) will provide funding for the additional monitors. The Commissioner's Office confirmed this, adding that the number of air monitors to be funded is to-be-determined.
He was speaking at the Wallace Stegner Center Symposium on air quality at the University of Utah law school.
The Great Salt Lake has 6 monitors nearish to the lake (researchers say they aren't close enough), compared to 9 at Owens Lake and 14 at Salton Sea, both dying lakes in California. Their surrounding populations are much less than the 2.5 million near the Great Salt Lake.
Lawmakers funded additional dust samplers in 2023, but they haven't been installed.
Kevin Perry, a University of Utah professor who studies the dust at the lake, noted that people are building homes ever closer to the dry lakebed. He said Utah needs to know how often is dust coming off the lake, if the dust posts health hazards and to which communities."We cannot fail. We must absolutely save Great Salt Lake. Because we are the lake," Perry said at the law school event.
Read more about dust and the information that is lacking here.
