The Great Salt Lake Collaborative is a group of news, education and media organizations – including The Globe, Amplify Utah and student journalists at Salt Lake Community College – that have come together to better inform and engage the public about the crisis facing the Great Salt Lake.
The following story was originally published by FOX 13, a collaborative partner.
Shawnya Wayman owns Hide Out Farm and Ranch in Erda.
“It’s been our livelihood for so long that we don’t know anything else anymore,” she said.
She’s spent the last 20 years raising her kids on the farm. Now, her daughter, Miranda Smith, helps manage the farm with her children: three generations of farmers fighting to grow food and raise animals against a changing climate.
The mother and daughter have noticed the wind events have become more frequent and more powerful over the years.
“When we would go to the farmers market to be able to sell things, we didn’t have as much produce because of the damage that the winds have caused,” said Smith. “The wind makes a big difference. It dries things out really fast, and so it takes more time to come out and try to manage the animals [and] the garden; we have to put more water on it and make some microclimates to kind of help with that.”
As the Great Salt Lake declines and toxic dust events increase in intensity, they will disproportionately affect residents of Tooele County and the west side of Salt Lake City, according to a recent NASA study.
With big industrial areas, proximity to the airport and being surrounded by freeways, the west side always takes the brunt of the pollution, said Alejandro Puy, Salt Lake City Council member.
“That means people,” he said. “Those numbers mean kids growing up with asthma and developing asthma and adults not being able to breathe. The reality … is that many of the families on the west side won’t have the luxury of escaping. They will have to stay, and that means that those with wealth will be able to escape, and those that don’t, won’t.”
The farmers in Tooele County are facing the same reality.
“My husband and I are getting older,” said Wayman. “It’s really hard to start over again. We put a lot of time and a lot of love into this place, and so to walk away from it would be devastating. I mean, it brings me to tears to even think of it.”
The farmers need a lot of water to bring healthy food to the people of Tooele County, but they feel helpless to stop others from using so much, said Wayman.
“It’s development, is what I think it is,” she said. “We need to have a control on the development and really look at our water situation because too many cities and areas are just, you know, giving the developers those permits and not taking into consideration our water issues.”
It will take all of us, on a large scale and on a personal level, to save the Great Salt Lake, said Puy.
“We need to remember that this is an emergency,” he said. “The solutions need to happen right now. We don’t need the longer showers. We don’t need to be watering Kentucky bluegrass. We need to get away from this idea that wealth is associated with how green your grass is.”
