"Democracy invites us to take risks. It asks that we vacate the comfortable seat of certitude....We are nothing but whiners if we are not willing to put our concerns and convictions on the line with a willingness to honestly
listen and learn something beyond our own assumptions."
Terry Tempest Williams, Orion (March/April 2004)

Last Fall, the Jordan Valley Water Conservancy District (JVWCD) proposed discharging concentrates of sulfates and selenium into the Jordan River and its associated wetlands. This proposal was a part of the Natural Resource Damage (NRD) Settlement Proposal between the State of Utah, Kennecott Utah Copper (KUCC) and JVWCD to clean up contaminated groundwater aquifers and provide municipal quality drinking water to the Affected Areas in the Southwest Salt Lake Valley.

FRIENDS and other members of the Great Salt Lake community were opposed to JVWCD's proposal. We thought there needed to be better alternatives and a more robust discussion.

Happily, Dianne Nielson, the NRD Trustee, responded by initiating measures to involve a wider constituency in the decision making process and revise the terms of the original settlement proposal and implementation agreements.

If you have been tracking this issue, you recognize these efforts to improve opportunities for stakeholder participation and scientific review of the groundwater clean up project and other remediation work. The Trustee hopes that these measures will culminate in a better proposal and agreement.

In March a Stakeholder Forum was established. The Forum provided feedback to JVWCD on alternatives for managing wastes from the Zone B/Lost Use component. The Forum will continue to review and discuss various aspects of KUCC's remediation programs under EPA and the Dept. of Environmental Quality oversight.

On July 7th, FRIENDS hosted a meeting for the conservation community to meet with the Trustee, KUCC and JVWCD. The purpose of this meeting was to review the proposed revisions and ask questions in preparation for the Public Hearing scheduled on July 14th at the South Jordan City Council Chambers. (Written comments on these revisions are due by August 2, 2004.)

Although all of these efforts are commendable, what is important to remember is that the catalyst for this improved process was the collective public expression of the Great Salt Lake community. We were successful in making it clear that communication about the proposal was weak and decisions were being made without adequate public input.

Finally, in conjunction with these efforts, the Trustee has another tool she can use to help her decision making.

For many years, members of the conservation community and interested regulatory agencies have argued the need for developing numeric standards for Great Salt Lake. The Great Salt Lake Numeric Standards Working Group (GSL Working Group) has recently been formed. (See in this issue Numeric Standards for Great Salt Lake: The Time Has Come).

The GSL Working Group will recommend sitespecific Numeric Water Quality Standards for the open waters of Great Salt Lake. These standards will prevent impairment of beneficial uses and sustain the natural resources of the Lake and associated wetlands. The first standard to be developed is for selenium. This standard will be critical in providing supporting data for one of three design options that JVWCD is proposing for discharging concentrates.

The Separate Design, the Integrated Design and the Minimum Integrated Design all meet the terms of the Consent Decree. Of the three designs, JVWCD prefers the Separate Design.

We find the Separate Design unacceptable for the following reasons.

1. The Separate Design discharges selenium directly into Great Salt Lake through a pipeline into Gilbert Bay (South Shore). FRIENDS supports either the Integrated or Minimum Integrated designs because the concentrate is not discharged directly into Great Salt Lake.

2. The Separate Design includes a Reverse Osmosis (R/O) facility for both Zone B and the Lost Use component. This design exceeds the terms of the Consent Decree and is an attempt to create an infrastructure to meet the District’s long term water development goals. The Integrated and Minimum designs do not include an R/O facility for the Lost Use component.

FRIENDS supports either the Integrated or Minimum Integrated designs because they satisfactorily meet the terms of the Consent Decree. Long term water development for the District is not a criterion for the Consent Decree. It requires a very different public process than the one related to this NRD proposal.

We believe that the revisions to the original NRD proposal and implementation agreements were timely and necessary. However, our analysis is that the Separate Design is not in the best interest of the Jordan River, Great Salt Lake, or the communities, both natural and economic, that depend on them.

In saline,

Lynn de Freitas