The Great Salt Lake doesn't stink, but Farmington Bay does.
That's the consensus of Wayne Wurtsbaugh of the Utah State University College of Natural Resources and his graduate students, who studied the levels of dissolved nutrients in Farmington Bay last year.
"We're in a sorry state in terms of water quality (there)," Wurtsbaugh reported Friday afternoon during a segment of the annual Great Salt Lake Issues Forum in the Wyndham Hotel. "It's not a pretty picture, unless you're algae."
Comparison of the eutrophic levels found in Farmington Bay are higher than any other body of water in Utah, he said, though the bay is not found on any pollution list.
"There's not a huge recognition of the problem," he said. That's because no one swims in the bay and few may boat on it. Nearby hunting is about the only interaction with it. "I can hardly get my students to put their hands into it to sample."
Wurtsbaugh hopes that his preliminary data on this situation will grab some attention and get an extensive study done on this problem.
"Essentially, Farmington Bay is a sewage treatment pond," he said. Three sewage plants in Davis County directly process sewage and dump the wastewater into the bay. Several other sewage plants from Salt Lake County dump their water into the Jordan River, which goes into the bay, too. "We're putting an awful lot of nutrients out there."
Davis County's causeway to Antelope Island separates the bay from the rest of the lake and has just one major interchange, which doesn't mix the water significantly. Farmington Bay is still salty, but not nearly as much as the rest of the lake. Plus, the bay averages just 3 feet in depth.
Chlorophyll concentrations in Farmington Bay last fall were 141 micrograms per liter, compared with 7 at Bridger Bay to the north, in the USU studies. Hydrogen sulfide concentration was also about 10 times higher in the bay than the rest of the lake.
Wurtsbaugh said this concentration may not be a bad thing — it all depends on your perspective. In fact, another preliminary test his students did was to mix the algae-rich water of the bay with open lake water and study how well brine shrimp did in different mixes. They actually did better in a 50-50 mix. Any higher amount of bay water and their actions dropped off sharply. The bay's effect on other wildlife is yet undetermined.
Besides the need for more study, Wurtsbaugh's not certain this concentration — some 40 years worth of man's pollution — could be changed.
Less water transparency, a stink, high algae and low oxygen levels are what all the dissolved nutrients can produce in the bay.
In all, the daylong conference, sponsored by Friends of Great Salt Lake, had more than 100 participants and a dozen speakers talking about bird life to ancient lake history to urban sprawl.
Martha Davis of the Mono Lake (Calif.) Committee delivered the keynote address. One of her concerns is that diverting Bear River water for the Salt Lake area's residential use could drop the Great Salt Lake by as much as 6 feet. This could dry up tens of thousands of acres of wetlands and is a threat not unlike what Mono Lake, another salt-laden lake located on the east side of Yosemite National Park, has experienced with Southern California's extensive water diversions.
E-mail: lynn@desnews.com