07-17-2016, 01:06 PM
[#0000FF]Poor old Utah Lake has always been a "dumping ground" for all the nasty stuff humans wanted to "flush". In the early days it received raw sewage, outflow from tanneries, municipal and agricultural runoff, etc. And for many years it got tons of nasty outflow from Geneva Steel.
Treated wastewater is probably the mildest "enhancement" Utah Lake has absorbed over the years. It has been treated to remove the "sludge" and to kill off (most of) the bacteria. It is a lot better than anything dumped into the lake in the past. The major problem with it is that it still contains dissolved "nutrients"...like phosphates and nitrates...that the algae feeds upon and grows.
About the only thing that has prevented Utah Lake from becoming a toxic waste basin is that it usually gets an annual flushing...from spring runoff. In "normal" years there is enough inflow to fill the lake to overflowing and dilute and send the nasty stuff down the Jordan and out to "sea". But any year the lake does not fill it continues to concentrate the objectionable elements without being able to send them downstream.
This year was especially bad. Water levels in Utah Lake dropped to a point lower than they did at the end of the last drought...ending in 2005. But there was no significant algae bloom in the late summer and fall of 2004. This year the lake was kept abnormally low with the decision to horde water upstream, in Deer Creek and Jordanelle. UL started out at a water level lower than the end-of-year water level last year. And as soon as temperatures began to climb this summer the algae bloom started, over a month earlier than usual and much heavier.
There are much better solutions than redirecting the flow of treated wastewater. After all, it is still water back into the lake. Possibly the biggest and best aids...in the future...will be to let more water into Utah Lake and to monitor and reduce the outflow when it is not needed elsewhere.
The
fact is that the staggering amount of growth around Utah Lake...and in Salt Lake...has increased the demands on all available water. Poor old Utah Lake is the "football" that gets kicked around to satisfy the claims for more water. Unfortunately, it has seemingly reached a "tipping point" beyond which it cannot maintain a healthy ecology. There are solutions. Let's just hope that the folks in power use their brains and not their bank accounts to come up with the right solutions and to implement them.
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Treated wastewater is probably the mildest "enhancement" Utah Lake has absorbed over the years. It has been treated to remove the "sludge" and to kill off (most of) the bacteria. It is a lot better than anything dumped into the lake in the past. The major problem with it is that it still contains dissolved "nutrients"...like phosphates and nitrates...that the algae feeds upon and grows.
About the only thing that has prevented Utah Lake from becoming a toxic waste basin is that it usually gets an annual flushing...from spring runoff. In "normal" years there is enough inflow to fill the lake to overflowing and dilute and send the nasty stuff down the Jordan and out to "sea". But any year the lake does not fill it continues to concentrate the objectionable elements without being able to send them downstream.
This year was especially bad. Water levels in Utah Lake dropped to a point lower than they did at the end of the last drought...ending in 2005. But there was no significant algae bloom in the late summer and fall of 2004. This year the lake was kept abnormally low with the decision to horde water upstream, in Deer Creek and Jordanelle. UL started out at a water level lower than the end-of-year water level last year. And as soon as temperatures began to climb this summer the algae bloom started, over a month earlier than usual and much heavier.
There are much better solutions than redirecting the flow of treated wastewater. After all, it is still water back into the lake. Possibly the biggest and best aids...in the future...will be to let more water into Utah Lake and to monitor and reduce the outflow when it is not needed elsewhere.
The
fact is that the staggering amount of growth around Utah Lake...and in Salt Lake...has increased the demands on all available water. Poor old Utah Lake is the "football" that gets kicked around to satisfy the claims for more water. Unfortunately, it has seemingly reached a "tipping point" beyond which it cannot maintain a healthy ecology. There are solutions. Let's just hope that the folks in power use their brains and not their bank accounts to come up with the right solutions and to implement them.[/#0000FF]
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