Great Salt Lake drying up as plans to punch hole through causeway are delayed


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OGDEN — The drying up of the Great Salt Lake is beginning to have significant economic consequences, and that seems to have stirred up a hint of turbulence among the lake's varied stakeholders.

With the north part of the lake at its lowest level in recorded history, the lake's biggest mineral company is calling for action no later than December on a long-standing plan to punch a hole through a railroad causeway. For years, the causeway has been acting like a gigantic dam across the body of the lake.

The plan to breach the causeway was delayed to December because of concerns about the impact on the lake's brine shrimp population. So this week, officials of Compass Minerals launched a media push to argue against any further delays. In spite of the company's worry, it's not clear at this point if any agencies, businesses or interest groups will actually push for another postponement.

The issue swirls around a railroad causeway built in 1959. It crosses the Great Salt Lake on an east-west line dozens of miles west of Ogden.

Several years ago, Union Pacific closed two culverts in the causeway because they were collapsing and threatening the stability of the railroad bed. That action severed the connection between the lake's north arm and south arm, in effect creating two very different lakes. The south arm gets all the incoming fresh water from three major rivers while the north arm gets almost no fresh water. Over the years, the north arm has become extremely salty and now evaporation is shriveling it up.

"The north arm is now 3 ½ feet lower than the south arm, which is unprecedented," said Joe Havasi, director of natural resources for Compass Minerals.

The company relies on the north arm for salty water and collects the brine in company evaporation ponds. During a three-year evaporation cycle, several different salts precipitate out of the water. Each year, the company has the capacity to produce 320,000 tons of sulfate of potash, as well as 750,000 tons of magnesium chloride and 1.5 million tons of sodium chloride.

The products are sold for fertilizers, highway de-icing, dust control and other commercial uses.

Years of drought and evaporation have driven the north arm down to the lowest levels ever recorded, and the steep decline is a major complication for Compass Minerals.

"It's been challenging the past two or three years to acquire the brine," Havasi said, noting that the shoreline of the north arm is now 6 miles from the company's intake canals.

"The shore keeps receding further and further away, necessitating the extension of the canals," he said, "and we've had to do that four times since 2014."

The extensions so far have cost the company more than $3 million.

The lake is more than a billion-dollar-a-year business for various industries, some with facilities and concerns on the south arm as well as on the north. The stakeholders' interests don't always coincide and are sometimes in conflict with each other.

The prospect of even lower water levels on the south arm — an inevitable result of the proposed causeway project — has raised concerns from boaters who fear the south arm's two marinas are in danger of long-term shutdown. State agencies have also worried about the difficulty of conducting search and rescue operations on the lake if the marinas are left high and dry.

Clean-air advocates also worry about the potential for dust storms if winds whip across newly exposed dry lake beds along south arm shorelines close to population centers.

Utah's Great Salt Lake seen on Wednesday, Oct. 19, 2016, is continuing to dry up, and it's starting to have significant economic consequences, especially on the north side of the lake. The lake has been divided by a railroad causeway since 1959, separating the north half from the south, with the north dwindling away much faster than normal. Mineral Compass is calling for a plan to punch through the railroad causeway and let the water return. (Photo: Josh Szymanik, Deseret News)
Utah's Great Salt Lake seen on Wednesday, Oct. 19, 2016, is continuing to dry up, and it's starting to have significant economic consequences, especially on the north side of the lake. The lake has been divided by a railroad causeway since 1959, separating the north half from the south, with the north dwindling away much faster than normal. Mineral Compass is calling for a plan to punch through the railroad causeway and let the water return. (Photo: Josh Szymanik, Deseret News)

Other interests groups worry about the impact of lake shrinkage and any possible mitigation projects on the lake's only major residents: brine shrimp. The annual brine shrimp harvest is a big industry in itself, and the brine shrimp population is also a crucial food source for millions of birds that visit the lake each year.

In spite of their sometimes differing interests, many stakeholders and government agencies agreed that the causeway should be breached. The Union Pacific completed a bridge to replace one section of the causeway and was all set to knock out a 150-foot-wide opening under the bridge beginning Oct. 1. But then the project was postponed because of short-term worries about the brine shrimp.

"We asked for it to be delayed until December," said John Luft of the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources.

The worry is that as lake water flows north through the new opening, a significant amount of salt will flow the other direction, raising the salinity of the south arm. The sudden change could threaten this year's crop of juvenile brine shrimp during their most critical month: October.

"They're susceptible to that salinity change," Luft said, "and they would probably suffer."

The worry at Compass Minerals is that there might be even more delays.

"We're concerned," Havasi said, "that if the breach is delayed through 2017, then the north arm could go down another 2 feet as it's done the past two years."'

Don Leonard, a spokesman for the brine shrimp industry, praised Union Pacific for agreeing to the delay. He was noncommittal about whether the industry will accept the project in December or push for more delays. But he stressed the need for long-range efforts to deal with the fundamental problem: a long-term decline of freshwater flows into the lake.

On that point, Compass Minerals is in full agreement about the future of the lake.

"It has its down years and it has its up years," Havasi said. "So I think we would all cross our fingers that we start getting some pretty good snowpacks and realize a rebound in lake elevation."

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