Utah
Lakebed dust is a worry in Utah. In California, it’s already a problem
Sitting on the couch next to his mom inside their mobile home in Mecca, California, 5-year-old Ruben Mandujano lets out a gurgled cough while playing on a tablet. The phlegm stuck in his throat is noticeable. But the constant cough is something he’s used to.
His mother, Rosa Mandujano said he came down with some kind of illness about “eight out of the 12 months of the year” when he was younger. Now, after various surgeries, an asthma diagnosis, medications and a nebulizer, Mandujano estimates her son is sick “five months out of the 12.”
The family has grown accustomed to the frequent infections. Both of their children suffer from asthma. A cupboard in their kitchen is dedicated to dozens of over-the-counter and prescription drugs.
Mandujano said her son’s problems get worse when the air quality is awful – another common issue for Coachella and Imperial Valley residents. Mecca, where the Mandujano family lives, is enveloped by agricultural fields and a short distance from the north shore of the declining Salton Sea, a saline lake facing similar turmoil as Utah’s Great Salt Lake.
Dust storms have become the norm being so close to agricultural fields and the Salton Sea, she said. Winds reaching 75 miles per hour whip through predominantly low-income and immigrant communities. The dust gets so bad, Mandujano said, that “you can’t see what’s in front of you.”
Kristin Murphy
/
Deseret News
With the exposed Salton Sea lakebed and the loose dirt and pesticides from the surrounding fields, Mandujano said it’s rare to find a Coachella Valley resident who doesn’t suffer from allergies or asthma. But the impact of the bad air quality and dust storms is worse for some, like Ruben.
“His asthma and his allergies combine, it’s a ticking bomb for him,” Mandujano said. “He says that everything hurts. His ears hurt, his eyes hurt, his nose hurts. He doesn’t even want to get touched.”
When the phlegm won’t leave his throat, Ruben has to use a nebulizer, which circulates well-known asthma medications like Albuterol or Pulmicort through a mask. Mandujano said she hooks her son up to the nebulizer about 121 times a year.
“He hates it because it makes him throw up because it gathers all of the phlegm,” Mandujano said. “He knows he’s going to start throwing up. So he just says, ‘Mommy, I don’t like this,’ and keeps trying to take it off.”
While Rosa Mandujano fights to keep her family healthy, California state leaders, scientists and community advocates are trying to identify solutions to clean up the air, especially as it pertains to the dust accumulated from the Salton Sea. Like Great Salt Lake, there are toxins in the sediment of the exposed lake bed.
Kristin Murphy
/
Deseret News
Scattered near the roughly 27,000 acres of exposed Salton Sea playa are lines of hay bales.
Charlie Diamond, a researcher with the Salton Sea Task Force at the University of California Riverside, said it’s a “dust suppression project” aimed to “break up the flow of air right at the ground level.” The goal, Diamond said, is for the hay bales to “suppress the dust production or emission.”
During high wind events, Diamond said toxins and other sediments like gypsum and salt get “blown around in the surrounding communities, [and] causes a lot of problems with respiratory health, especially in young folks.”
Usually, Diamond said, the hay bales are planted with native vegetation, which the shoreline severely lacks. That acts as another dust suppressant. But “these projects are really contingent on some external source of freshwater,” Diamond added, and that’s the crux of the issue – in the arid climate, there isn’t enough fresh water making its way to the Salton Sea to begin with.
With an exorbitant amount of dried lakebed, it’s unlikely hay bales will prevent all the dust from pummeling community members.
“That’s not a solution, it’s a band-aid,” Diamond said.
Local officials are working on other remedies. The Imperial Irrigation District, which oversees the hay bale projects, is also planting and germinating natural vegetation near the shoreline. Environmental specialist Ross Wilson said the district is using groundwater to hydrate the plants.
Kristin Murphy
/
Deseret News
Wilson said there isn’t a way to “necessarily make less dust,” the hope is the natural vegetation “catches the dust” like the hay bales and results in better air quality.
The agency also uses a Portable In-Situ Wind ERosion Lab, also known as a PI-SWERL, to figure out what exactly is in the dust. The device, which resembles an industrial floor polisher, replicates wind speeds and collects air quality measurements. Wilson added it also tracks which areas produce the most emissions.
“No one has the money to just mitigate the entire sea. So if we can dial down which areas actually are emissive and which areas are the problem, then we can really nail down our resources to those specific areas,” he said.
If more water isn’t funneled into the Salton Sea, the Imperial Irrigation District predicts upward of 70,000 acres of bare lakebed within the next 10 years.
Utah’s Great Salt Lake is up against the same fate as the Salton Sea when it comes to dust.
Kristin Murphy
/
Deseret News
Great Salt Lake Commissioner Brian Steed noted in the state’s first Great Salt Lake Strategic Plan that the lake’s low water levels are increasing dust emissions. He added the accumulation from the estimated 800 square miles of the exposed lake bed poses a public health risk and is causing snow to melt approximately 17 days sooner than normal.
Steed told KUER’s RadioWest that he believes dust from Great Salt Lake is “going to be the hardest one [problem] to solve.”
“When you have an exposed lake bed that weathers over time, which has happened over years, you see additional dust days and problems with PM 2.5 and PM 10,” he said. “And we know that we’ve had a problem [with air quality] along the Wasatch Front especially.”
The Utah Office of Legislative Auditor General highlighted in the Great Salt Lake Strategic Plan that it would cost a minimum of $1.5 billion to keep the lake’s dust at bay, along with $15 million each year for ongoing maintenance.
Steed recognizes the price tag associated with dust mitigation. In an ideal world, “the lowest cost alternative” is lifting Great Salt Lake’s water levels so the crust “keeps that dust in place.”
Kristin Murphy
/
Deseret News
Utah is just beginning to grapple with its looming dust problem, but for Rosa Mandujano in California, the dust is enough to make her contemplate if it’s worth staying in her hometown. Her two kids love to be outdoors, but the air quality often triggers adverse reactions, especially for Ruben, forcing them to remain inside.
“I’ve talked to my husband and said if we get a good job opportunity and we would have to move out of the state, I mean, let’s go,” Mandujano said. “I know it’s scary because my family’s here. All his family’s here, but I’ve seen friends done it. It’s nothing out of the world. You have to start somewhere.”
KSLTV5’s Alex Cabrero contributed to this report
Copyright 2024 KUER 90.1
SALT LAKE CITY — The Utah Jazz missed out on the NBA Playoffs, but still scored a big win thanks to a coin flip.
In Monday’s tiebreaker coin flip to determine who had the fourth-worst record in the league last season, the Jazz came out winners over the Sacramento Kings, who had the same 22-60 record.
Had the Jazz lost the coin flip, they would have been fifth in NBA Draft Lottery odds. Only the worst four teams are guaranteed to remain within the top eight of the lottery.
If Utah had fallen to fifth, there would have been the chance they could have dropped out of the top 8 teams in the lottery, and owed the draft pick to Oklahoma City, which was top-8 protected in a previous trade.
The Jazz now have an 11.5 percent chance to win the first overall pick in the NBA Draft Lottery, which is scheduled for Sunday, May 10.
The Utah Jazz are rolling into a big offseason before they into what’s projected to be a wildly different-looking 2026-27 campaign from what they had just seen this past 22-win season.
But before that season is able to get underway, the Jazz have some priorities to address in the offseason––both in terms of constructing their roster and retaining a few key pieces from last year’s group into next year.
That makes their salary cap situation and everything around it important to be aware of in the next few months. So with that in mind, we’ve put together an offseason cap tracker for a glimpse of what the Jazz are dealing with in terms of cap space, contracts, and any of their own free agents hitting the open market.
Let’s break it down:
Maximum Possible Cap Space: $24.7M
The Jazz are currently projected at just under $25 million in cap headed into the summer. That’s without any additional moves made to the roster from how they’re entering the offseason, and without factoring in any free agents’ pending cap holds.
That number is bound to get smaller once the Jazz hash out their contract situation for Walker Kessler, but it could also see an uptick if Utah were to shed salary with some of their non-guaranteed deals, or any other player they wanted to pivot from.
As of now, it allows the Jazz to make a couple of moves around the edges in free agency, but the main focus will lean on signing Kessler to a long-term deal.
Contracts
A glimpse of the Jazz’s contract values for the 2026-27 season, and when they’re slated to hit free agency from their current deals:
– Jaren Jackson Jr.: $49.0M, ’29 PO
– Lauri Markkanen: $46.1M, ’29 UFA
– Ace Bailey: $9.5M, ’29 RFA
– Keyonte George: $6.5M, ’27 RFA
– John Konchar: $6.1M, ’27 UFA
– Cody Williams: $6.0M, ’28 RFA
– Brice Sensabaugh, $4.8M, ’27 RFA
– Svi Mykhailiuk: $3.8M*, ’28 UFA
– Kyle Filipowski: $3.0M, ’28 RFA
– Isaiah Collier: $2.7M, ’28 RFA
– Hayden Gray: $2.1M*, ’27 RFA
– Bez Mbeng: $2.1M*, ’27 RFA
– Blake Hinson (two-way), ’27 RFA
Total: $142.1M
*- non-guaranteed
The biggest chunk of the Jazz’s salary leans on their top two veterans, Markkanen and Jackson Jr., each making a combined $95 million next season alone.
However, the rest of the roster isn’t taking up much money. No one else will be making more than $10 million, and their payroll is a little less than $150 million in total.
Another noteworthy fact: the Jazz’s key roster pieces outside of George and Sensabaugh are all under contract through the next two seasons.
Both of the aforementioned names are also bound to see extension discussions take place this summer, which might lock in their future for even longer.
Free Agents
A look at who from this season’s roster is set to hit the free agent market in July:
– Kevin Love (UFA)
– Jusuf Nurkic (UFA)
– Walker Kessler (RFA)
– Oscar Tshiebwe (two-way)
– Elijah Harkless (two-way)
The biggest name of note is, of course, the Jazz’s restricted free agent big man, Walker Kessler, who Utah is bound to hand a big payday, but it remains to be seen how much that contract––or offer sheet from another team––will be.
Jusuf Nurkic and Kevin Love have also expressed their desire to return to the roster as they hit free agency. Re-signing both likely wouldn’t cost much for the Jazz financially, but instead relies on a question of whether the roster space is readily available to keep both.
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Utah
Golden Knights vs. Mammoth Game 1 prediction: NHL odds, picks, best bets for Stanley Cup Playoffs
The Utah Mammoth is going to be a trendy underdog pick in the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
Not only does Utah have the novelty of this being its first-ever appearance in the postseason going for it, but the Mammoth tick plenty of other boxes that punters look for in a dark horse. They’re fast, dynamic, and create plenty of quality scoring chances.
The only problem is that they are running into the Vegas Golden Knights, arguably the best defensive team in the Western Conference, in Round 1.
Vegas is a -170 favorite to win the series, and it is -152 to win Game 1 on Sunday night.
Mammoth vs. Golden Knights odds, prediction
The Golden Knights had a weird season. Vegas started hot, took its foot off the pedal, and struggled to regain its form down the stretch. That led to a surprising coaching switch late in the campaign, but the move paid immediate dividends as John Tortorella led the Knights to a 7-0-1 record in his eight games behind the bench.
It should be noted that Tortorella benefited from an easy schedule since taking over in Vegas, but it’s hard to deny that the team looks sparked with a new voice in their ear.
What’s especially encouraging for Vegas is that its most glaring weakness, the play of goaltender Carter Hart, has started to trend in the right direction at the exact right time.
And Vegas is so good in its own zone that Hart doesn’t need to stand on his head to get the team over the line against Utah. If he’s just average, the Knights will stand a chance, especially since Utah’s goaltending situation is just as much of a question mark.
Betting on the NHL?
Outside of Vejmelka outplaying Hart, the Mammoth will also need to get this series on their terms if they want to pull the upset. Utah grades out as a slightly above-average defensive outfit, but its strength is up front with dynamic playmakers like Logan Cooley and Clayton Keller, plus sharp-shooter Dylan Guenther.
For those stars to have an impact, the Mammoth will need to get Vegas to open up and engage in a back-and-forth style. I just don’t see that happening with a team that was so disciplined in its own zone all season. The Knights led the NHL in expected goals against and high-danger chances conceded at 5-on-5, which shouldn’t be a shocker given the personnel in Sin City.
Not only does Vegas boast a deep blueline, but forwards Mitch Marner and Mark Stone are regarded as two of the best defensive minds in the entire sport.
Perhaps Utah can blitz Vegas and pull the upset, but I’d need a bigger number to go against the experienced, defensively savvy Knights in a best-of-7.
And if you’re looking for a play with more upside, have a good look at Vegas to pull off the sweep at 12/1.
The Play: Vegas moneyline (-152) | Vegas to sweep the series (12/1, FanDuel)
Why Trust New York Post Betting
Michael Leboff is a long-suffering Islanders fan, but a long-profiting sports bettor with 10 years of experience in the gambling industry. He loves using game theory to help punters win bracket pools, find long shots, and learn how to beat the market in mainstream and niche sports.
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