The Great Salt Lake is a mystery everyone is trying to solve. A problem waiting for an answer.
Enter Mike Kolendranios who has hope and visions of the future in his eyes. He can see it in the birds who have returned to the Great Salt Lake uplands. Take the American white ibis. It hangs out in the Great Pacific Flyway.
This is the man in charge of the Great Salt Lake Shorelands Preserve run by The Nature Conservancy.
It is the last piece of unspoiled land in western Davis County, a buffer between development and nature. It is where the ibis flies, it is where the snowy plover finds its nest and millions of migratory birds find home.
“We are seeing the bird numbers go up,” he said.
The Nature Conservancy embarked on a project with collaboration from the Utah Department of Agriculture and Food to enclose ditches. It saves water and gives more to the Great Salt Lake.
It means concrete and closing ditches. It seems like a little thing, but with water, everything counts.
This installation involves 3,000 feet of pipeline to replace ditches. Every 20 feet there will be a watering riser that is above ground. That’s how the water will be dispersed.
Kolendranios is no stranger to the problems of the lake. He was a baby, he said, when the lake reached a low in 1964. He saw it rise in the 1980s with the flooding.
It ebbs and flows.
The idea now is to pipe the ditches and save water for a lake that is always changing its personality. The Nature Conservancy roams cattle on its expansive spread to help take care of phragmites, wild root reeds that suck up the water.
This project is focused on 260 acres that will boost water delivery to the Great Salt Lake by as much as 5% to 10%.
The nonprofit organization is engaged with Kaysville for this restoration project designed to not only protect the environment, but help with quality of life. It is the drop of water that counts.
