The recent Salt Lake Tribune front page article —”Water leasing a tough sell”— brought tears to my eyes. I shed the same tears decades ago when I read the line: “please don’t throw me in the briar patch.” The front page continued: “For hay and tree farmers … giving up shares of their life blood pinches an already thin resource.”
Growing hay is likely one of the worst uses of scant fresh water resources in the second driest state in the nation. Ironically, The Tribune ran another article a few editions later, touting the importance of alfalfa hay production to our state’s economy! However, if I were those farmers I’d set as high a price as the state is willing to pay to lease the water right to, in a quixotic way, re-water the Great Salt Lake. Then I’d subdivide my few acres and sell building lots for a subdivision. As much as I despise “clone home” developments it is questionably, in the short-term, a better use of the land and water. In the long term, because of those developments, the need for culinary water will increase, sadly to grown miniature versions of the governor’s hayfields in the form of water-thirsty Kentucky bluegrass lawns.
Would the water rights the farmer in The Tribune article owns do much to re-water the GSL? Likely not. This past winter’s snowfall will help a wee bit to re-water the GSL. But long-term forecasts strongly suggest that after this decent winter snowfall, the long-term drying trend, that has gripped much of the West over seven decades, will likely continue. And after that the northerly and westerly winds, normal to our state, will continue to blow toxic dust off of the dry lake bottom over the Salt Lake Valley.
The known heavy metal polluters, US Magnesium and Kennecott Copper, should pay all of the costs to mitigate GSL climate-related issues as it was/are their heavy metals that polluted the GSL.
Abvram Martine, Holladay
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