Downwind: How Failed Great Salt Lake Water Policy and Toxic Dust Create Generational Debt and Jeopardize Utah's Future

The Great Salt Lake Waterkeeper and Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment have partnered on a groundbreaking new report, titled Downwind, about the health impacts and economic costs of the toxic dust crisis at the Great Salt Lake. The disappearance of the Great Salt Lake is a health and economic crisis for the entire Wasatch Front as well as a wildlife crisis of hemispheric proportions. This report provides the most comprehensive database assembled on the issue of air pollution caused by the continued desiccation of the Great Salt Lake.

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Our report seeks to help the public understand the economic liability of not saving the Great Salt Lake and outlines the myriad toxic impacts to Utahns from failing to raise lake levels. Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment and the Utah Rivers Council’s Great Salt Lake Waterkeeper have spent 18 months researching and summarizing this material and consulting some 577 published references.

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Our hope in producing this report is that by outlining the scope of the public health crisis looming from a desiccated Great Salt Lake and summarizing the exorbitant mitigation costs to Utah taxpayers, we can show the Utah public that there is only one viable dust-mitigation solution: restore the Great Salt Lake’s surface area to 1,660 square miles. Utah’s future depends on it.

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