I grew up in a suburb of New York City, where baseball was a big thing and we had easy access to Yankee Stadium, the Polo Grounds (Giants), and Ebbets Field (Dodgers). It was not uncommon to have an entire World Series played in that one city.
Now, in our very own Salt Lake City, plans are afoot to build a stadium similar to one of those and lure a major league team here. Although it’s something of a reach for such a small city, I do like the idea of having such a stadium located right in the city, as those New York stadiums were.
But I wonder about the air its attendees will have to breathe. Climatologists and other scientists say that if nothing is done, the Great Salt Lake will be dead in five years’ time. And nothing is being done.
That means by the time the stadium is built, toxic air filled with arsenic, magnesium, PM 2.5 particles and other poisons will be blowing through Salt Lake City, including the Fairpark area where the stadium will be. Unless the new stadium has a covered roof, this air will poison all the tens of thousands of fans inside.
Yet in The Tribune’s long announcement (on April 12) of the plan, there is no mention at all of this looming hazard. Why is that?
Tom Huckin, Salt Lake City