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Environment

(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Families begin their hike to Donut Falls, the busiest destination in Utah's Big Cottonwood Canyon, on Thursday, Aug. 4, 2022. The Uintah-Wasatch-Cache National Forest is preparing a trails plan for Big Cottonwood and two neighboring canyons.

Central Wasatch trails to undergo overhaul

By Brian Maffly | February 3, 2023, 12:42 p.m.

(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) The site of Salt Lake City’s old landfill, pictured on Jan. 18, 2023, is to be developed into a “tiny home” community called The Other Side Village. The developers plan to build an 8-acre pilot phase this year on the least contaminated corner of the city property at 1850 W. Indiana Ave. The Other Side Academy must first remediate the site.

‘Tiny home’ village promises refuge for homeless. But the site has a toxic past.

By Brian Maffly | February 2, 2023, 5:16 p.m.

(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) Construction of North Davis Sewer District's new pipeline along the Antelope Island causeway on Tuesday, May 31, 2022.

Experts say pumping ocean water to the Great Salt Lake would cost a lot but help very little

By Leia Larsen | February 1, 2023, 4:49 p.m.

(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) US Magnesium, seen across the Great Salt Lake from Stansbury Island on Saturday, March 26, 2022.

One refinery is responsible for 10% to 25% of Salt Lake’s winter inversion PM2.5 pollution, NOAA finds

By Brian Maffly | January 27, 2023, 8:05 p.m.

(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) Ben Abbott, Assistant Professor of Ecosystem Ecology at BYU, checks the status of a water monitoring station on Peteetneet Creek in Payson Canyon on Thursday April 25, 2019.

Judge tosses Utah Lake dredger’s defamation suit against scientist, ruling it abused the legal system

By Brian Maffly | January 26, 2023, 3:46 a.m.

(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) A bottle of containing uranium ore. A new uranium mill maybe coming to Utah under a proposal unveiled this week.

Entrepreneur says he holds the secret to Utah’s uranium renaissance

By Brian Maffly | January 26, 2023, 6:34 p.m.

(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) Bonanza Power Plant, a coal-fired generating station in Uintah County. The plant, and two others in Utah, could face early retirement under a ozone-reduction plan imposed on Utah by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Overflight provided by EcoFlight.

Utah Legislature to pledge $2M for ozone fight with EPA

By Brian Maffly | January 24, 2023, 11:31 p.m.

(Leah Hogsten | The Salt Lake Tribune) Visitors to Mirror Lake in the western Uintas walk the path around the lake, August 6, 2017. This fire prone region of the Uinta-Wasatch-Cache National Forest will be among those targeted for treatments to reduce fire risk under a program announced Thursday by the U.S. Forest Service.

Forest Service to spend millions to reduce risk of catastrophic fire in the Wasatch and western Uintas

By Brian Maffly | January 21, 2023, 1:00 p.m.

(Brian Maffly | The Salt Lake Tribune) Many of the conifers in the Lake Country of the western Uinta Mountains, pictured in 2016, are standing dead thanks to beetle infestation. Lawmakers say northern Utah’s “overgrown” forests are depleting the state’s water resources and must be thinned in order to rescue the Great Salt Lake.

Are trees ‘the enemy?’ Some Utah lawmakers claim overgrown forests suck too much water

By Brian Maffly | January 23, 2023, 11:02 p.m.

(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Fresh snow blankets the Salt Lake Valley as the sun sets on Mount Olympus on Wednesday, Jan. 18, 2023.

Utah is having its best winter in nearly 20 years

By Leia Larsen | January 19, 2023, 1:00 p.m.

(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) The Colorado River loops back on itself before reaching the confluence with the Green and the start of Cataract Canyon in Canyonlands Utah as seen in mid-October 2021.

Utah water policy ‘playing catch up when it should be leading the pack,’ according to new report

By Leia Larsen | January 19, 2023, 4:42 a.m.

(Al Hartmann | The Salt Lake Tribune) Petroglyphs of animals grace the walls above Nine Mile Canyon in the western end of the Book Cliffs.

Duchesne County looks to open oil tanker route through Nine Mile, Utah’s famed rock art corridor

By Brian Maffly | January 14, 2023, 3:06 p.m.

(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) Utah Lake at Vineyard Beach on Wednesday, Jan. 26, 2022. Proponents of a controversial dredging project are taking the state to court seeking to get the project reinstated.

Plan to dredge Utah Lake isn’t sunk. Developers sue the state to revive it.

By Brian Maffly | January 12, 2023, 8:54 p.m.

(Leah Hogsten | The Salt Lake Tribune) The Bronco Utah Operations mine located in Emery County, Jan. 4, 2023.

Coal extracted at Emery mine is so poor it doesn’t qualify as coal, operator says

By Brian Maffly | January 12, 2023, 4:14 p.m.

(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) A section of the Provo River near Victory Ranch in Woodland Valley in 2021. This stretch of this blue-ribbon trout stream is the subject of a case pending before the Utah Supreme Court, which is considering whether Utahns have a constitutional right to walk in streams across private land to fish and recreate.

Before statehood, Utahns fished in streams across private land. Does that mean they can today?

By Brian Maffly | January 10, 2023, 4:00 p.m.

(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Alice Hicken and Laren Gertsch who have adjacent properties in the Heber Valley going back generations, are part of a group called Friends of Heber Valley North Fields Coalition, a non-profit started in 2020 to try and bring attention to the changes happening in the area.

Growth and a proposed highway divide a bucolic Utah community

By Leia Larsen | January 10, 2023, 4:17 p.m.

(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) U. of U. graduate geoscience groundwater hydrology student Alex Engstrom, measures out a line of groundwater monitoring devices across a widened discharge channel for the central Davis sewer plant near Farmington Bay on Thursday, Nov. 3, 2022. Engstrom is in the process of measuring groundwater seepage that originates from a number of sources nearby with a primary look at levels of mercury.

How old is that water underground? Why the answer matters in the thirsty West

By Sofia Jeremias | January 4, 2023, 1:00 p.m.

(Great Basin Water Network) Iron County water honchos plan to pump groundwater from Utah's Pine Valley, pictured here, and pipe it 66 miles from Beaver County to growing Cedar City. Beaver County officials are moving to block the project.

Beaver County moves to enforce deal with its neighbor over groundwater pumping

By Brian Maffly | January 3, 2023, 3:31 p.m.

(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) Dust obscures Antelope Island and the Great Salt Lake in June.

Dear Legislature: Here’s what you can do in 2023 to save the Great Salt Lake

By Sofia Jeremias | Leia Larsen | December 30, 2022, 5:04 p.m.

(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Utah’s Lila Canyon coal mine, on Tuesday, Dec. 6, has been burning since a coal pillar spontaneously combusted on Sept. 20. The mine operator's plans to expand operations hinge on the state's acquisition of adjacent federal coal tracts.

Troubled coal mines to acquire federal leases through SITLA land exchanges — and skip environmental reviews

By Brian Maffly | January 4, 2023, 4:42 a.m.