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Lake Effect: A pipeline from the Gulf of California to Great Salt Lake?

Ronald Woolley, a man with a white mustache.
wer.com

I'm Ronald Lee Woolley. I’m the president of Woolley Engineering Research.

I was a college student at BYU from out of state, and each time as I’d come into the valley, I’d think to myself, this is a wonderful place to live. I mean, the mountains are just amazing. And they overlook two lakes, Utah Lake and the Great Salt Lake, and the desert. I would just really like to live here one day. And I guess it was kind of a “this is the place” moment that I would have over and over again as I came into the valley.

Skiing when I was a college student was just amazingly wonderful, that new little skiff of snow almost every morning, you get the big storms with the big powder, but almost any day you're went, you get this little bit of light new snow that was just wonderful.

I think this area is a wonderful place to raise a family and I'm surrounded by neighbors who think the same. They have this “this is the place” moment. I call them refugees from California and Arizona, because we all really like being here. The weather is great, the air is clean. Until we have a problem. I just started to have concerns that maybe there was going to be more lake effect dust and less lake effect snow.

I got interested in pursuing the pipe idea, and things just sort of fell together. Israel, for example, uses ocean water after they take the salt out of it to supply their water supply. In fact, Israel even has enough excess water with the salt out of it that they're putting it into the Sea of Galilee. Wouldn't be cheap to do a pipeline from the Gulf of California, but it would be reasonable especially compared to the cost of not doing anything.

Read the pipeline proposal and other water-saving engineering ideas from Woolley Engineering Research here.

Aimee Van Tatenhove is a science reporter at UPR. She spends most of her time interviewing people doing interesting research in Utah and writing stories about wildlife, new technologies and local happenings. She is also a PhD student at Utah State University, studying white pelicans in the Great Salt Lake, so she thinks about birds a lot! She also loves fishing, skiing, baking, and gardening when she has a little free time.
Ellis Juhlin is a science reporter here at Utah Public Radio and a Master's Student at Utah State. She studies Ferruginous Hawk nestlings and the factors that influence their health. She loves our natural world and being part of wildlife research. Now, getting to communicate that kind of research to the UPR listeners through this position makes her love what she does even more. In her free time, you can find her outside on a trail with her partner Matt and her goofy pups Dodger and Finley. They love living in a place where there are year-round adventures to be had!