How the military from Utah and beyond connects to the Great Salt Lake (2024)

This article is published through the Great Salt Lake Collaborative, a solutions journalism initiative that partners news, education and media organizations to help inform people about the plight of the Great Salt Lake — and what can be done to make a difference before it is too late. Read all of our stories at greatsaltlakenews.org.

The declining health of the Great Salt Lake is not only a calling card for advocates, scientists and Utah lawmakers — it is on the radar of Utah’s military installations. These include Hill Air Force Base, Camp Williams, Dugway Proving Ground and the Tooele Army Depot, as well as the Utah Test and Training Range, the largest block of contiguous special-use airspace in the continental United States.

Why does it matter?

For the Utah military installations, keeping the lake thriving is a paramount goal, especially as it relates to wind-whipped dust for 800 square miles of exposed lake bed at the Great Salt Lake due to relentless drought and upstream diversions.

“I do believe that it is a concern for all of us. It’s not only the damage it poses to equipment, but especially to the personnel who are out there working everyday and working on the equipment. And so yeah, that’s a very big concern for us because we have an aviation facility in West Jordan and those winds could easily reach into West Jordan and some of that dust and those dust storms could go down into that area,” said Paul Raymond, with the Utah Army National Guard.

Raymond is the program manager for the state-sanctioned West Traverse Sentinel Landscape to facilitate important projects such as watershed restoration, wildfire mitigation and encroachment of a rapidly growing population in both Salt Lake and Utah counties — in the heart of Camp Williams’ country.

The state designation in 2023 added a layer of protection and gave the military options for working with communities and landowners to shore up an adequate buffer to continue its vital missions.

But earlier this year, the protection escalated to an entirely different level with the federal designation of the Great Salt Lake Basin Sentinel Landscape.

The designation ropes in over 2.7 million acres in northern Utah and contains the Western Hemisphere’s largest saline lake — the Great Salt Lake — and four military installations with unique missions and capabilities:. Hill Air Force Base, Camp Williams, Tooele Army Depot and the Air Force Little Mountain Test Facility.

What does a ‘Sentinel Landscape’ designation mean?

Tyler Smith, a retired Army brigadier general who now works for the Utah Department of Veterans and Military Affairs as the installation resiliency program manager, said there was a recognition early on to combat climate change, the effects of drought, wildfire mitigation and engage community involvement. He is the coordinator of the Great Salt Lake Sentinel Landscape.

Smith said as the lake shrinks it creates compounding problems for the military, pushing migratory birds east to them and causing potential airstrikes.

The new designation by the government envelops numerous federal partners, state agencies and nonprofits, as well the newly established Office of the Great Salt Lake Commissioner and the Utah Defense Alliance, whose mission is to advocate for Utah’s military.

“The Great Salt Lake Sentinel Landscape has come together to start working more effectively with the military mission being kind of central to the goals of the civil landscape,” Smith said. “And so Hill Air Force Base, you know, it can’t thrive if there are all these kinds of environmental factors that are creating problems in the community and in the state.”

It is funded with existing money from multiple agencies that include the U.S. Department of Interior and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Owens Lake and dust

Located on the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada in California’s Inyo County, Owens Lake became the nation’s largest source of PM 10, particulate pollution that penetrates the lungs and poses health risks. The pollution happened after diversions left the lake dry. The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power began siphoning the waters of the 110-square-mile lake in 1913. Within 13 short years, the California lake went dry.

The China Lake Naval Air Weapons Center had to shutter operations several times because of the dust, costing millions of dollars.

Phill Kiddoo — air pollution control officer with the Great Basin Unified Air Pollution Control District, which is the regulatory authority over Owens Lake and Mono Lake to the north — told the Deseret News in previous reporting that the concern was so great the Navy was doing its own studies. The Department of Defense, in fact, was one of the players urging federal action to mitigate the problem because operations at China Lake were curtailed as many as 10 times a year.

Raymond said, so far, dust has not been a major impediment to military operations at Camp Williams.

But the military is keenly aware of the potential.

The message: We don’t want to be another Owens Lake.