(Take Smaller Bites)

Our engineering tends to be brilliant but brief, not sustainable across ecological time frames or even across the span of more than a few human generations.

-Chip Ward, Hope's Horizon: Three Visions for Healing the American Land

The first meeting of the SouthWest Jordan Valley Groundwater Remediation Project Stakeholder Forum was held on March 17 at the South Jordan City Hall. The goal of this mouthful of a Forum is to ensure convenient, clear and direct communication between representatives of various community groups and stakeholders, the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ), Kennecott Utah Copper (KUC), and Jordan Valley Water Conservancy District (JVWCD). The Forum will also be used to discuss and select an alternative for by-product disposal that is a part of the remediation process. Dianne Niels

on, in her capacity as Director of DEQ, is Trustee of the Natural Resource Damage (NRD) settlement proposal related to this Remediation Project. The goal of the NRD proposal is to clean-up two groundwater aquifers (Zone A and Zone B) in the Southwest Salt Lake County that were contaminated from KUCC mining activities. It will also provide municipal quality drinking water to the Affected Areas. To achieve this, the groundwater would be pumped through a reverse osmosis facility. The by-product of this process would then need to be disposed of.

The DEQ, has been working with Kennecott and Jordan Valley to achieve the terms of the NRD settlement that was reached in 1995. Last year, JVWCD, responsible for the clean up of Zone B, was issued a UPDES permit to discharge contaminants of selenium and sulfates from Zone B into the Jordan River and Great Salt Lake wetlands. This alternative was determined to be untenable by the stakeholders, including FRIENDS, and the public. As a result, in January of this year, JVWCD requested a withdrawal of this permit with the Division of Water Quality.

In an attempt to find an alternative that will move this settlement plan forward, the Stakeholder Forum was convened. At the next meeting on March 31st, Forum participants will be reviewing a list of disposal options currently under consideration.

• No Action by JVWCD
• Deep Well injection
• Discharge to Great Salt Lake
• Discharge to KUCC GSL Discharge Pipeline
• Discharge to KUCC Tailings Impoundment
• Evaporation
• Distillation
• Discharge to KUCC Tailings Pipeline

Last year, FRIENDS and other stakeholders asked for exactly this kind of listing during the initial public hearings. But at that point we were presented with only one alternative to consider. Now we have this more complete listing BUT the time pressure is intense. The Forum will be expected to make a technically feasible and ecologically sound recommendation by April 14th so that JVWCD can present one of these alternatives to its Board of Trustees at their April 28th meeting.

Is it feasible that a defensible alternative can be developed that quickly?

We know that Jordan Valley has commissioned consultants to review the recommended alternatives. Will they include nationally recognized authorities on saline lakes and contaminants in these unique systems?

Although there is a process that has been presented to us, resources who have been working on this remediation project have already indicated that the next preferred alternative is to discharge the contaminants directly into Great Salt Lake.

We know that Kennecott is already doing this discharge under existing UPDES permits so, they will argue, what's the problem with another discharge?

Well, there is a problem. One of haste. We simply don't know what the ecological consequences of these kinds of discharges will be. If not now, then when are we going to take the time to be thorough in our evaluations and assess the kinds of long term decisions we are making before we take the next step for our Great Salt Lake neighborhood?

In saline,

Lynn de Freitas