The scenario reads more like apocalyptic science fiction than reality. The Great Salt Lake recedes and an ecological disaster, fanned by the wind, hits the Wasatch Front. But it’s not fiction. A team of graduate students at Utah State University is measuring airborne dust from the exposed lake bed as the water retreats, and some of that dust is laden with toxins.’When strong winds blow across the lake bed, polluted dust can be lofted into suspension and transported into ecosystems and urban areas along Utah’s Wasatch Front,’ said Molly Blakowski, a graduate student at USU’s Watershed Sciences Department and one of the project’s researchers.
A century of human activity is coming back as toxic dust as the Great Salt Lake shrinks
