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Show Rotary Club speaker relates past, future of GSL By CHERIE HUBER ; Dr. David Eckhoff spoke to the Centerville-" Centerville-" Farmington Rotary Club on the recent past and the near future of the Great Salt Lake. Dr. Eckhoff has worked on the Burn plant, and he has done studies on water level predictions predic-tions for the Great Salt Lake. He is also director direc-tor of the Salt Lake City Water Management Program, involved in planning for the lower Jordan River construction, and is a principle in charge of the west desert pumping for the state of Utah. In his remarks to the Rotary members he said that it is important for Utahns to understand what is going on with the Great Salt Lake, what decisions had to be made and the events that led to this point in the history of the lake. "Actual understanding of the lake didn't start until the last decade," he told his audience. audi-ence. "The lake has continued to shrink in size since 1 876 until it reached its historic low point in 1 963. The common understand was that they had diverted water from reaching the lake and the lake was going down. Some people worried that the like might eventually dry up altogether." "Everyone felt that they really didn't have to worry about the lake. But there are only 143 years of records on the lake. Until 1873 there were personal records only. But all the information infor-mation available pointed to the idea that the lake was going down and that it would stay down," he said. He pointed out that this year the area is faced with a water rationing situation again. "We have a short water situation this year, but we don't know about next year," he said. Dr. Eckhoff believes that there is a slightly wetter than normal long term trend. Over the last several years there has been about 150 to 175 percent of normal rainfall. Normal rainfall is the average of the precipitation from 1950 to 1986. About two thirds of the water in the Great Salt Lake comes from the Bear, Weber, and Jordan Rivers. Only a third comes from direct precipitation onto the lake. A slight shift in the precipitation pattern can make rapid changes in the lake. Then there is a real lag effect in the fall of the lake level again. Although this has been a dry winter, the lake is still at 42 1 1 .85. "There seems to be a two year memory in the water shed, meaning that it takes at least two years to drain the water shed of the excess waters from a heavy precipitation winter. This is intensified by the fact that there have been four years of wet weather." The last year that there was water rationing in Salt Lake County was 1977. That was after two years of back to back dry weather. The lake is now at its highest level. AMAX suffered a $100 million loss last June 6 when its facilities were destroyed. Repairs to 1-80 have cost the state in the range of $46 million. Union Pacific has spent $60 million over the last three years repairing damages to their tracks. Southern South-ern Pacific has spent $85 million to keep the causeway open. Wastewater treatment plants along the edge of the lake have had to spend money to protect themselves. High ground water wa-ter has also affected utilities. Some of the homes in parts of Salt Lake City are built at 4208. In the long run damages from higher ground water and so forth will come to close to another billion in damages. "So spending 60 million to deal with the problem seems justified," justi-fied," he told his audience. The lake has been twelve feet lower than it is right now. It would take fifty years for the lake to drop that twelve feet on its own. The West Desert Pumping station will help mitigate the damages which are taking place. It's not true that if the lake just goes no higher everything will be okay. Dr. Eckhoff also reviewed other plans that were suggested to control the lake. One suggestion sugges-tion to control the lake was to install at least one more reservoir upstream. However it takes ten to twenty years to bring a reservoir on line. The impact on the lake would be not more than one inch of lake level per year. Another plan was to divert the Bear River. That solution would cost $100 million and the plan is fraught with political difficulties because be-cause Idaho would have to take the water. That plan would only lower the lake level by about three inches per year. Dikes were also suggested. The dikes would have helped Davis County but would have aggravated the problems on the western side of the lake. The plan might have cost about $150 million. In addition, waste water plants would have had to be modified to discharge into fresh rather than salt water. When all the pumps are on line, 6500 acre feet of water can be moved every day. The first year the lake should be lowered by twelve inches. in-ches. During the following years the lake can be lowered from six to twelve inches each year. While it is true that the pumping will add to the lake effect for the Davis County area, the lake effect should bring about less than a five percent change in precipitation. |