Restoring the Great Salt Lake would have environmental justice benefits

The drying of the Great Salt Lake is releasing harmful dust to the surrounding Salt Lake Valley. But are some people more likely to suffer harmful consequences from increasing dust exposure? ESS faculty Sara Grineski and Tim Collins sought to answer this question through an environmental justice lens.  

Their team’s research examined how dust pollution changes based on lake levels and whether exposure changes with racial/ethnic or socioeconomic status. Their findings showed that dust exposure is highest in Pacific Islander and Hispanic people, and also higher in people without a high school diploma. 

Grineski hopes these findings will encourage policymakers to prioritize restoring the Great Salt Lake to a healthy level. “If we were to enact policy and conservation measures to raise the lake, we would benefit not only in terms of decreased dust, but in terms of less dramatic disparities between who is breathing in more of this dust,” says Grineski. “It’s important to consider the environmental justice implications of different choices that we might make in the policy arena when we think about different strategies for adaptation and mitigation to climate change.”

Their research is featured in the journal OneEarth.