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Great Salt Lake tech team seeks targeted research, updates salinity work and seeks grant subcommittee volunteers
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Summary
The advisory council’s tech team reviewed salinity conditions and engineering procurement for berm options, urged early planning for tech-team research grants, and solicited volunteers to define targeted research questions including return-flow characterization from sewer districts to the lake.
The meeting of the Utah Great Salt Lake Advisory Council tech team opened with administrative updates and a report on salinity-management work, followed by a call for volunteers to form a subcommittee to craft targeted research questions for the council’s tech-team grants.
The meeting chair said the salinity committee has not needed to act recently because "the salinity is in a good spot" and that an engineering procurement is underway to identify alternatives to the existing pile-rock berm. The chair added, "as of today, you know, we're at a 120 grams per liter, which is honestly where we aim to be in the fall," and said the salinity committee aims for a fall target between 120 and 150 g/L while working within a state requirement to maintain a 2-foot head-difference at year-end.
The chair said Jacobs Engineering (consultant Jeff Dimlick) is working with the team and partners including USGS to evaluate options for a more movable, durable structure to manage salinity and capture spring runoff if warranted. No formal decision or funding commitment was recorded at the meeting; the procurement is for an engineering analysis to present options.
On grants, the chair urged the group to prepare early for the next tech-team grant cycle and proposed narrowing the solicitation to research that directly advances management decisions. The chair proposed one specific research task: characterize return flows from sewer districts and other systems and determine how much of that flow actually reaches the lake. Participants suggested additional priorities including microbialite distribution surveys, salt-balance accounting that includes dust export, CHIRP bathymetric and nearshore subaqueous spring detection, and quantifying inputs and outputs to inform water-allocation decisions.
Members agreed to form a volunteer subcommittee to develop specific research questions and a ranking rubric that will later feed into the grant solicitation. Several participants offered to assist with drafting questions; the chair said staff will reach out to volunteers and aims to reconvene the subcommittee after the holidays.
Next steps: the tech team will form the subcommittee to finalize research questions and a proposed RFP, the salinity committee will continue to evaluate berm options based on the forthcoming engineering analysis, and staff will report back at the next meeting, scheduled for February 11.
