My name is Molly Blakowski. I'm a PhD student at Utah State University's Department of Watershed Sciences.
I'm from Detroit, so I've been surrounded by great lakes my entire life. When I moved to Utah to study Great Salt Lake, I thought I knew what I was getting into, but I was wrong. On my first day of fieldwork, my colleague, Jeff Peralta Dewey and I got caught in a dust storm, which we had to walk through for hours…your eyes are watering, you're coughing, we had our fair share of pretty crazy days out doing fieldwork, collecting samples from our dust monitoring sites on what used to be covered by Farmington Bay. It was really tough fieldwork, some of the toughest I've ever done.
But when I really think about the effects Great Salt Lake has had on me, my mind goes back to where I'm from — to Michigan — because I've seen firsthand what can happen to the well-being of entire communities, when really poor water management decisions are made. It's now been eight years since the water crisis in Flint began. There are still hundreds of residents today who don't have access to clean drinking water.
I'll be really clear that there are lots of differences between these two places and these two scenarios. I bring it up because when I'm out on the dry lake, bed miles for many other people, and I'm just left with my thoughts, I can't help but wonder what's the worst case scenario here.
Pollutants that have been accumulating in the lake bottom sediments for over a century now are potentially able to leave the lake and they may be blowing into natural ecosystems, agricultural areas and cities and towns that are close to the lake. We're still trying to figure out how much dust dispersed along the Wasatch Front is from Great Salt Lake in comparison to other sources. Maybe there's not enough Great Salt Lake dust coming our way to cause health problems right now, when the vast majority of the lake bed is still covered by a protective crust.
But if lake levels stay low like this, and the crust continues to weather away, what are things going to be like 5, 10 years from now, especially if the population keeps growing, if the drought keeps getting worse, if we don't implement dust control measures, or if regulations aren't put in place to restore lake levels.
I don't want to look back and regret not doing more to protect the lake. It's not too late for me and the many other friends of Great Salt Lake to act big — act now — and do what we can to preserve Great Salt Lake and all of the amazing ecosystem services it offers.
