ShareThisWILLARD, Utah -- Hundreds, if not thousands, of migrating pintail ducks and snow geese filled the gray sky on a remote stretch of the Great Salt Lake where Jeff and Lynn Pace and Rich Noble skimmed across the shallow waters northwest of Willard Bay in airboats.
"I've seen the sky black with birds," said Lynn Pace, a hunter and lake lover from West Valley City. "It's a wonder of the world so taken for granted."
Airboaters and a coalition of environmental organizations are concerned about a proposed 33,000-acre expansion of dikes and evaporation ponds by Great Salt Lake Minerals (GSLM). They fear the diked ponds would negatively affect millions of birds that use the lake to migrate, feed and nest.
Jeff Pace compared the relatively small loss of wetlands in the more controversial Legacy Highway project farther south as the Great Salt Lake equivalent to human fingers. The area of Bear River Bay included in the proposed expansion, he said, is the lake's heart.
One thing is certain: Mineral operations on the lake are massive.
According to the Mineral Leasing Plan for the Great Salt Lake, current mining operations by all companies on the lake use 171,644 acres for mineral extraction. GSLM's expansion would add 33,000 more.
If allowed to expand beyond its current 43,000 acres, GSLM's operation would cover 119 square miles, a land mass larger than Salt Lake City.
Approval for the expansion involves the state, which manages the lands under the lakebeds, as well as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which must issue permits because the proposal has the potential to harm or destroy wetlands.
A coalition of hunting, airboating and environmental organizations who feel the Utah Department of Natural Resources did not consider their concerns when issuing permits for the expansion is challenging the decision-making process in 3rd District and the Utah Supreme courts.
A federal environmental impact statement that must be conducted because of potential destruction of wetlands is in its preliminary stages. If all goes as planned, a draft will be out for public comment this fall with a final decision coming in early 2009.
Peggy Landon, a spokeswoman for Great Salt Lake Minerals, said last August that the dikes would not hurt the lake and that the permit process will ensure no damage is done.
The debate pits economics and a growing need for domestically produced potash fertilizer against fears that increased mining operations would harm the Great Salt Lake's hemispheric importance to birds.
According to a scoping document on the project by the Army Corps of Engineers, Great Salt Lake Minerals "draws naturally occurring brine from the lake into shallow ponds and allows solar evaporation to produce sulfate of potash as well as salt and magnesium chloride minerals. Sulfate potash is a specialty fertilizer that improves the yield and quality of high-value crops such as fruits, vegetables, tea, tree nuts and turf grasses."
The state receives money from the leases. According to Dave Grierson of the Utah Division of Forestry, Fire and State Lands, which issued the leases, the state receives $1 per acre per year plus royalties of 66 cents per ton for salt and 5 percent of royalties for other chemicals.
Joro Walker, a Salt Lake environmental attorney who represents such groups as the Audubon Society, Sierra Club, Friends of the Great Salt Lake, League of Women Voters, airboaters and hunters, lists 10 effects the expansion could have on the lake.
They include turning lake ecosystems into industrial zones, cutting off recreational access to 33,000 acres of the lake, destroying the beauty of the landscape, artificially reducing water levels and availability critical to the ecosystem, and impeding water flow.
Environmental groups also worry about impacts to thousands of acres of wildlife and fish habitat. Of particular concern are nesting American pelican colonies at Gunnison Island that are now remote but will be less isolated and more accessible to prey species and human incursion by the new development.
There also is concern about Great Salt Lake water quality, especially if concentrations of poisons such as mercury and selenium increase.
(Tom Wharton can be contacted at Wharton(at)sltrib.com)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
