The Great Salt Lake, which has risen 1.5 feet in the past year, is at its highest level of the decade.

But experts are not overly concerned yet.The lake level at the south shore was at 4,203.6 feet above sea level as of Tuesday.

In March 1998, the lake level was 4,202.1. By July of last year, it had risen to 4,203.4 before it began a seasonal decrease again.

During the peak flood years of 1986 and 1987, the lake level rose to just under 4,212 feet and caused at least $250 million in damage to roads and property. Then it began a 10-year downward trend until two years ago, when it started rising again.

"A drier year should slow it down," Wallace Gwynn, geologist with the Utah Geological Survey said of 1999.

Scientific predictions aren't made of the lake's future levels. The 1980s proved such forecasting is too fickle and complicated -- more complex than predicting swings in the stock market.

"We don't predict what the lake level will be," David Allen of the U.S. Geological Survey said. "There are too many variables . . . We don't have any concerns over it at this point."

Variables affecting the lake level include snowpack, spring melt levels, cloud cover, irrigation amounts used, temperature and even the salinity of the lake because saltier water evaporates slower.

Barry Burton, assistant director of community and economic development for Davis County, is also not presently concerned about the lake level.

"I'm hoping for a long hot and dry summer myself," he said.

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Antelope Island is Davis County's second-busiest tourist draw, next to Lagoon, and he said if the 7.2-mile causeway were damaged by rising lake waters, it would severely affect tourism at Antelope Island. Some 400,000 people a year use the causeway to visit the lake's largest island.

Burton said the north side of the causeway was recently shored up with rocks and fill to prevent damage from wave action during storms. The causeway sits at an elevation of 4,208 feet.

Allen said annual fluctuations in the lake, a body of water that lacks a natural outlet, are normal and may vary up to several feet a year.

Gwynn is concerned about the decreasing salinity in the south arm of the lake more than anything else and what environmental impacts that trend could have. He plans on taking more extensive salinity measurements later this spring.

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