Latest news with #HEALUtah
Yahoo
18-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Opinion: The dust we breathe — Utah's urgent wake-up call from the Great Salt Lake
Since 1987, there has been a steady decline in the Great Salt Lake's water elevation. 2022 reached its lowest annual lake elevation in recorded history, raising alarm throughout the Great Basin in Utah, from Brigham City, Farmington and Ogden to Orem, Provo and beyond. In response, researchers, policymakers, businesses, faith groups, farmers, ranchers and nonprofits have stepped up to address a crisis that has already exposed roughly 1,110 square miles of lakebed. The Healthy Environment Alliance of Utah (HEAL Utah) collaborates with these stakeholders to confront the growing threat of hazardous dust storms that originate from the drying lakebed and worsen our already poor air quality. This is not a distant concern — these storms are already happening and are becoming more frequent. Currently, Utah experiences a few dust storms per year. But as the lake continues to shrink, both the frequency and intensity of these storms will increase. The Salt Lake Valley's unique geography traps air pollution, meaning that harmful particles from dust storms can linger in our communities for days. These dust events are most common in spring and fall due to passing cold fronts, though summer thunderstorms can also trigger them. With rising temperatures and a changing climate, dust storm conditions will become even more prevalent, blowing toxic particles from the exposed lakebed directly into our homes and lungs. The Great Salt Lake is a terminal lake, which means that all precipitation that falls as rain or snow within its watershed flows into the lake and remains there, with no natural outlet. This means that any pollution this water picks up along the way ends up in the lake. We know from researchers that the lake sediment contains potentially harmful elements, including aluminum, antimony, arsenic, copper, uranium and vanadium. When airborne, these elements contribute to serious health risks. Exposure to polluted air can cause short and long-term health problems including coughing, shortness of breath and asthma. Chronic exposure to elements found in the lakebed can result in various health impacts, including lung and heart disease, stroke, and even cancer. Utah already ranks among the worst states in the nation for air pollution. According to the American Lung Association's 2025 State of the Air report, Salt Lake City, Provo and Orem rank 25th out of 225 metro areas in the nation for worst short-term particle pollution, and 54th out of 208 for year-round particle pollution. While Utah is making some efforts to increase water inflows to the lake, more must be done. Getting more water in the lake is critical to keeping dust on the playa and out of our atmosphere. At the same time, dust storms are already impacting our health and our lungs. State regulators and lawmakers must prioritize comprehensive dust monitoring and air quality alerts for communities around the lake. Though the Legislature has yet to fully fund this work, the Utah Department of Environmental Quality and Division of Air Quality are committed to building a statewide dust monitoring network. This is essential to establishing a baseline dataset, tracking environmental changes, and protecting public health today and in the years to come. Utah must ensure that all communities living near the Great Salt Lake are informed about the potential dangers of dust storms. Schools, daycares, elder care facilities, centers serving people with disabilities, and outdoor workers must have access to the resources needed to protect themselves. A stronger, more coordinated response is essential, one in which communities receive clear guidance and support from the state and researchers to guard against the lake's worsening air pollution concerns. This support should include, at the bare minimum, funding air filtration systems in homes and businesses, providing face masks to block harmful particulate matter, improved access to medical care, and creating a reliable alert system to warn residents of incoming dust storms. These collective actions, from residents and decision makers alike, will help ensure Utah is ready to face a dusty future, at least until the lake is restored to healthy levels. This work is difficult, long term, and there is no one solution. But Utahns are adaptable, extremely intelligent and creative. By practicing gratitude for our Great Salt Lake while taking action to increase water flows and dust monitoring, we can be cautiously optimistic for the future of the lake.
Yahoo
16-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump administration expedites permitting for Utah uranium mine to a two-week process
Former North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum participates in a swearing-in ceremony of state lawmakers on Dec. 2, 2024, in Bismarck, North Dakota, shortly before completing his term as governor. (Photo by Michael Achterling/North Dakota Monitor) Permitting reviews for major mining projects may take years to complete, usually gathering input from the community and vital information on the natural and cultural characteristics of the sites. However, the Trump administration announced on Monday that, under newly established emergency procedures, a uranium mining project in Utah would have a completion timeline of just 14 days. After a portion of it was already mined, the Velvet-Wood mine located in San Juan County is set to be reopened by Anfield Energy, a Canadian energy development company, according to an economic analysis of the project. The project is expected to yield significant results, since the Velvet mine has already produced 400,000 tons of ore containing 4.2 million pounds of uranium, often used as fuel at nuclear power plants, and 4.8 million pounds of vanadium, which is used in steel production and energy storage. But, environmental advocates worry that accelerating the approval process for this project would set a dangerous precedent for the country and may cause harm to the already scarce water resources in the area. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX 'These processes, which are enshrined under one of our bedrock environmental laws, the National Environmental Policy Act, are really fundamental to being able to do an objective, well-thought out assessment of what the potential harms of a project like this might be,' Lexi Tuddenham, executive director of the environmental nonprofit HEAL Utah, said. 'And they also, under the normal process, give the opportunity for public comment.' The project sits in a Utah area that has seen the boom and bust of uranium mining over time, leaving abandoned mines without any cleanup plans, Tuddenham said. It is also near the Navajo Nation, which has been affected by uranium mining and processing throughout history. In such a rushed process, it would be extremely difficult to consider public comments from tribes. By shortening the process to just two weeks, there's essentially not an opportunity for the people who may know the landscape best to provide important information on the site's characteristics. 'One of the things being said about this mine is that it would only require about three acres of surface disturbance, but that's not accounting for the underground disturbance that happens as part of the mining process,' Tuddenham said. 'There's really complex hydrology, like aquifers and just different water tables throughout our landscape, and when you mine into them, sometimes you permanently alter them.' When the U.S. Department of the Interior announced the permitting review would be expedited to 14 days, it cited the national energy emergency declared by President Donald Trump on his first day in office. 'America is facing an alarming energy emergency because of the prior administration's Climate Extremist policies. President Trump and his administration are responding with speed and strength to solve this crisis,' Doug Burgum, secretary of the Interior, said in a statement in a news release. 'The expedited mining project review represents exactly the kind of decisive action we need to secure our energy future.' The department added in the release that the U.S. 'is dangerously reliant on foreign imports to meet its demand' to fuel nuclear reactors. However, at the same time, a court battle is ongoing over the Trump order that allowed the process to be fast-tracked. Fifteen blue states are suing the federal government for issuing an energy emergency declaration without an actual emergency. 'The Executive Order is unlawful, and its commands that federal agencies disregard the law and in many cases their own regulations to fast-track extensive categories of activities will result in damage to waters, wetlands, critical habitat, historic and cultural resources, endangered species, and the people and wildlife that rely on these precious resources,' attorneys general for the states wrote in the suit. While Tuddenham believes there may be ways to make it easier for the public to engage in the process, expediting the years-long timelines, making substantial mistakes at the beginning of the permitting analysis would make wait times even longer and put a bigger burden on taxpayers. 'If you really skip around and skip around this bedrock environmental law and try to basically do it wrong, you're, quite frankly, opening yourself up to a lot more litigation and red tape,' she said. 'So going faster at the start doesn't mean going faster overall. It's sort of a performative thing.' SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
