Protecting the Great Salt Lake
Panel Paves Pathway to New Pollution Standard

 

Great Salt Lake, Utah – During the spring and fall the Great Salt Lake shoreline is typically covered with nests of eggs ready to hatch, all evidence of the phalaropes, black-necked stilts, avocets and grebes here to feast on a buffet of brine shrimp and flies.

“There are times when millions of birds come in waves,” explains our guide Dave Barnes of the Central Davis Sewer District, which took a small group of Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) officials and an Associated Press reporter on a birds-eye view of the lake’s fragile ecosystem that DEQ is working to protect.

On this day in late May, surprisingly only an occasional avocet and stilt was seen, and there were but few signs of nesting or bird eggs. This doesn’t completely surprise Theron Miller, an environmental scientist in the Division of Water Quality. The unpredictable nature of the lake is what fascinates many people who visit it.

“When we monitor avocets’ movements and foraging habitats it changes every year,” Miller says, surveying the lake in an air-boat accompanied by DEQ’s Great Salt Lake Coordinator Jodi Gardberg and Associated Press reporter Mike Stark.

Therron Miller and Jodi Gardberg
Theron Miller and Jodi Gardberg

Leland Myers, manager of the Central Davis Sewer District, couldn’t agree more. He and his crew are here often, piloting people in air-boats and a Hover craft. “I always see something different,” says Barnes.

Leland Meyers
Leland Meyers (Manager, Central Davis Sewer District) and crew

For the past four years, Miller and eight other scientists, part of the prestigious Science Panel, have engaged in a $2.3 million project studying the lake. In particular, they have been testing bird eggs – seen as the best gauge to determine the health of birds that rest at the lake.

Scientists, bird watchers, duck groups and others are worried that an increase in pollution will affect birds’ reproductive success. This is partly due to selenium – a naturally occurring mineral that concentrates in the lake, arriving from various rivers and runoff from other sources such as industry and sewer plants all along the Wasatch Front.

Miller and other scientists are specifically looking at the eggs of mallard ducks, which although aren’t found in the open waters they are found to be the most sensitive to selenium than any other species.

Bill Sinclair, Walt Baker, Rick Sprott
Bill Sinclair (Deputy Director, DEQ), Walt Baker (Director DWQ), and Rick Sprott (Director, DEQ)

“We wanted to take the most protective approach,” explains Walt Baker, director of Water Quality, who was accompanied on the field trip by DEQ Executive Director Rick Sprott.

The Science Panel, hand picked for their expertise, has concluded that some of the eggs likely will not hatch if the selenium concentrations are between 6.4 and 16 parts per million (ppm). At that concentration, the bird egg mortality is between 2 percent and 21 percent.

The good news, however, is the Great Salt Lake is far from being contaminated with selenium. “The current concentrations are low, roughly around 2.7 parts per million,” says Miller. Even so, a high-powered steering committee comprised of lake users – industry, environmental groups, sewer districts and others – are recommending to the Water Quality Board to put a cap on selenium in order to prevent the lake from reaching the water quality standard.

Now, the first-ever numeric standard for selenium on the Great Salt Lake is about to be set, perhaps by the end of the year. But setting a standard has provoked much debate.

Bill Sinclair and Donna Spangler
Bill Sinclair, DEQ Deputy Director, and Donna Spangler DEQ PIO

Utah’s Aquatic Jewel

The Great Salt Lake averages 75 miles long and 35 miles wide, but is only 33 feet deep at its deepest point.

On this particular day the air-boats and Hover craft maneuvered to avoid the carp and the low-flying birds. It’s easy to get stuck, especially with a boat-load of people – which is exactly what happened roughly 22 miles from Farmington Bay near the north shore of the Great Salt Lake when Rick Sprott and Walt Baker became stranded on a submerged bar.

Leland Myers, Theron Miller and others, all clad in hip-waders, jumped in, pushing the craft back and forth to release it from the mud to deeper water. It didn’t budge. Barnes then shuttled Bill Sinclair, deputy director of DEQ, and me to a dry sandbar near the sewer canal before speeding back to save Baker and Sprott from their watery predicament.

It was a metaphor for what lake managers face when trying to chart the future.

Setting a numeric standard has divided the diverse group in three ways. Some members want a more stringent selenium standard at around 5 parts per million, which would allow all eggs a chance to hatch. That seems to some to be an impossible standard given that non-selenium factors could impact the hatching success of birds nesting on the lake.

Others stakeholders, primarily industry but with the support of scientists, think a limit of 12.5 parts per million is more realistic. At that concentration, probably one egg in 10 won’t hatch. Controls on discharges would start at 5 ppm, and no added selenium discharges would be allowed at 7.5 ppm.

A representative of the brine shrimp industry thinks a 10.4 ppm cap would be a good compromise.

Those are the three recommendations before the Water Quality Board.

It’s an emotional issue to some,” Miller says. “The diverse nature of the task force and competing interests make coming up with a consensus challenging,” Baker adds. “But at the end of the day, we all agree that the lake and its occupants deserve protection.”

The Water Quality Board will spend much of the summer deciding a standard. Once a standard is determined, it will be forwarded to the Environmental Protection Agency for consideration and there will be a chance for public comment.