A few dozen scientists, educators and government officials gathered in Salt Lake City this week at a conference attempting to give what they call "terminal water bodies" their due respect. While the onslaught of statistics and science delivered by the various speakers on hand was daunting to the water-management layman, the essential message was clear: Lakes in the West deserve the same attention and protection as other water sources.

"We think of the Great Salt Lake as a dead lake, but it's not," noted Tony Willardson, associate director of the Western States Water Council, the group co-sponsoring the conference with the California-based Water Education Foundation.

Willardson's point was illustrated with a field trip to the Farmington Bay Waterfowl Management Area and to Antelope Island, where conference attendees learned how volatile the lake's ecology is depending on how high the water is, and what water is flowing into it. Many wildlife species depend on the lake to live.

Comparisons between the Great Salt Lake and lakes in California such as Owens Lake and Mona Lake illustrated how terminal water bodies are overlooked when it comes to water management.

Water is often diverted from rivers flowing into lakes for irrigation, causing lake levels to drop. If the levels drop too low, exposed minerals can become dust that worsens air quality to dangerous degrees, a phenomena currently happening at the Great Salt Lake.

"Often the fixes for these lakes are not so much technical as simply increasing the flow [of water]," said Rita Schmidt Sudman, executive director of the Water Education Foundation.

Various sections of the conference addressed aquatic wildlife management, saline lake ecology, management plans for lake regions and avian resources.

Despite the expertise on hand, though, Sudman said the best aspect of the conference was getting people together who work on lake issues, something that is all too rare.