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 — August Beckwith, a 29-year-old Utah man with autism, has been found safe after disappearing for a second time in a matter of weeks.
“We are overjoyed and deeply grateful,” Lori Beckwith, August Beckwith’s mother, said in a post on Facebook Sunday. “Thank you to the many remarkable people who helped with compassion and kindness throughout. Wishing everyone a loving and peaceful Christmas.”
Beckwith had been missing for 24 days after disappearing from the University of Utah campus on Nov. 17. Lori Beckwith, August’s mother, had taken to Facebook to report when he had first been found.
The Beckwith family wishes for privacy at this time.
This story may be updated.
SALT LAKE CITY (KUTV) — The Mountain View Corridor project connecting Salt Lake and Utah Counties was completed early, opening just in time for holiday travel.
The Utah Department of Transportation celebrated the early completion of the years-long project in a Friday event, with attendees able to walk the new road and take photos with Santa. The road and trails were opened to traffic after the event.
UDOT officials posted a video of the celebration, with the caption reading, in part, “This road and these trails are now yours.”
Commenters praised their work on the project—and the video itself—with some saying they’ve already driven on the new road.
“I almost cried when I went on the corridor today! It was done sooner than I thought so thank you!” one commenter wrote.
Another user called it the “best Christmas gift EVER!”
MORE | Mountain View Corridor:
Some Utahns were less pleased, bringing up concerns about the lights not operating correctly on the north end or complaints about future construction.
However, the video itself addressed the negative comments UDOT receives, specifically complaints about constant construction.
“The truth is, if you want a DOT that never does anything and therefore never inconveniences you…Well, that just ain’t us,” the post read. “We don’t do construction to you, we do it FOR you, because we ARE you. We all live here too.”
The Mountain View Corridor project, also known as the 2100 North Freeway Project, was designed to improve east-to-west traffic flow between I-15 and Redwood Road in Lehi. It also included “shared-use-paths” for pedestrians and cyclists.
UDOT officials said Redwood Road is one of the most congested roads in Utah County, following Interstate 15 and Pioneer Crossing.
Officials expect this could reduce Redwood Road delays by 75% and also help alleviate I-15 traffic in the area.
The project began in Spring 2024, with construction expected to finish in Spring 2026. UDOT officials said the project was completed four months ahead of schedule.
In order to complete the road and trails, crews moved 1.5 million tons of dirt and paved more than 350,000 square yards of concrete and asphalt.
“This new stretch of Mountain View Corridor provides meaningful relief for drivers in fast-growing Utah County,” said Carlos Braceras, UDOT Executive Director. “Opening this stretch ahead of schedule improves regional connectivity and provides drivers with safer, more dependable travel options as the area continues to grow.”
While the new extension is complete, UDOT officials plan to continue to extend the Mountain View Corridor in the future. They said the goal is for it to be a 35-mile freeway connecting Interstate 80 in Salt Lake County to State Route 73 in Utah County.
The next phase of the project is planned to begin in 2027 and will address the stretch from Porter Rockwell Boulevard in Herriman to Old Bingham Highway in West Jordan.
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Utah gave itself the perfect gift going into the Christmas break — a blowout win.
The Runnin’ Utes lived up to their moniker by rolling past two-win Eastern Washington 101-77 at the Huntsman Center on Saturday night in Utah’s largest margin of victory this season.
The Utes had big nights up and down the roster — led by Keanu Dawes, Terrence Brown and Don McHenry — in the team’s final nonconference home game.
“I think it was the best game for the 40 minutes where we kind of controlled it and stayed in control and followed the game plan,” Utah coach Alex Jensen said.
How the game transpired
The contest got off to a slow, sloppy start, as Eastern Washington held an 8-6 lead four minutes in before Utah’s first mini spurt — a 7-0 run — got the home team in front.
Things stayed relatively back and forth over the next nine minutes before Utah used a 16-4 run to go up 40-27.
That set the tone for the Utes, who outscored the Eagles 26-11 over the final 7:53 of the first half to take a dominant 50-34 lead into the break.
Utah shot 74.1% from the floor and 6 of 10 from 3 in the first half, the second hottest-shooting first half from a Big 12 team this season behind only a 75.9% effort from Iowa State against Alcorn State.
The second half was a lot of back-and-forth from both sides, with the Utes going up by as many as 20 points early in the half while Eastern Washington did enough to keep the game from turning into a blowout.
That is until around the nine-minute mark, when Utah went on a 12-3 run over the next three minutes to move ahead a then game-high 21 points.
The Utes then pulled away in the game’s final minutes for their largest margin of victory this season.
This was a team win
There were a lot of solid individual performances across the board for Utah on a night when it best executed Jensen’s mantra of “playing with the pass.”
“I think that’s been the lost art in the last little while. I think fewer and fewer players get to this level and they know how to play without the basketball,” Jensen said. “That’s the one thing that I can teach them, how to create opportunities off the basketball, because they all grew up only knowing how to score with the ball.
“I keep hitting them on play with the pass, change sides of the floor and score together, which I think they did a good job. How do I fit in to the four other guys in the court, and what are my opportunities and my role? And then it’ll happen.”
The Utes had a season-high 23 assists in the victory and owned a 22-2 edge in fast break points as they played with the most confidence and poise they’ve shown all year.
Dawes embodied that mindset, as he shot a perfect 9 of 9 from the floor, scoring a season-high 21 points while adding a team-high nine rebounds and two assists.
“I just think we were able to follow the game plan, and then…we just played with the pass,” Dawes said. “We had 23 assists to their, was it 13 assists? I think it just started from how we came out the gym ready to play, and just getting everybody involved early on in the game.”
Jensen, who’s been pushing Dawes to be more assertive, said the talented junior “made a jump tonight.”
“I think he was aggressive, and our guards helped with that. … We told them all week we were going to see a lot of press, to be aggressive, and KD (was) catching it, taking it all the way. I think that was encouraging,” Jensen said.
Brown, meanwhile, showcased his ability to see the floor. In addition to scoring 20 points, he had a season-high 11 assists as Utah shot a blistering 68.4% from the floor.
“Coach emphasizes a lot going into games (that) a lot of teams are going to be crowding the paint, doing things like that,” Brown said. “So (for me, it’s) just emphasizing me finding an open man and playing with the pass, which I was doing pretty well today.”
McHenry, the other half of the Utes’ dynamic scoring guard duo, was the hottest shooter for Utah, scoring a game-high 27 points while shooting 10 of 13 from the field and making a season-high six 3-pointers. He also had three assists.
“You know, he’s another guy, pretty much every guy I want a little bit more from, but I tell him all the time he’s one of the few seniors on the team, and he’s got to be, you know, one vocal but I think Don, he’s playing off the ball more than he has in the past, and then he does a great job of letting the game come to him and picking his spots and being patient,” Jensen said.
“He and (Brown) have really done a good job with that and and they’ve done a better job playing off each other.”
Two other Utes scored in double-figures. Freshman Kendyl Sanders continued to show why he’s earning minutes by posting 13 points, a rebound and an assist against three turnovers, while Seydou Traore helped spark Utah’s offense early and finished with 10 points, four rebounds and two assists.
A first look at a depth piece, while another sits
After a long wait, Ibi Traore made his first appearance for Utah in a regular-season game.
The last time fans in the Huntsman saw him suit up was in the preseason a year ago, but a season-ending injury sidelined him last season and he had yet to play in the 2025-26 season until Saturday.
It was a modest appearance — Traore played nine minutes, made his only field goal attempt of the night and finished with two points, a rebound and a steal.
“All the credit in the world to him to be ready. A line we always use as coaches is ‘Make me play you,’ so Ibi came in,” Jensen said.
“It’s going to be probably for two, three, four minutes, but actually, he forced us to keep him in for longer, so I’m happy for him, because it’s been a long road back from the injury, but credit to him for being ready to play.”
For the second straight game, Utah sharpshooting guard Jacob Patrick was in street clothes. His absence didn’t hurt the Utes against Eastern Washington, and it gave other guards valuable minutes.
Before his injury, Patrick had earned his first start when Traore missed a game, and Patrick has been showing plenty of promise during nonconference play.
It’s something to monitor when Utah will get Patrick back out on the court.
Christmas break, then even bigger challenges
It will be nine more days before Utah (8-4) hits the floor again, when the Utes travel to face former Pac-12 rival Washington in Seattle on Dec. 29.
That post-Christmas game will be the final tuneup for Utah before Big 12 play begins with a Jan. 3 matchup with No. 1 Arizona in the Huntsman Center.
Eastern Washington’s height gave Utah some issues in this one — the Eagles had 18 offensive rebounds to just five for Utah, though the Eagles weren’t successful in turning those extra opportunities into points. The Utes only trailed 13-10 in second-chance points.
Eastern Washington had some success scoring inside, finishing with 38 points in the paint, though Utah was better, adding 52. The road team’s top two scorers were 6-foot-9 big men — Alton Hamilton IV had 19 points and nine rebounds, while Kiree Huie added 17 points and nine rebounds.
The Huskies’ top scorer is 6-foot-11 German big man, Hannes Steinbach, who averages 17.5 points and 11.9 rebounds.
Arizona is also loaded with a powerful front court, and both of Utah’s next two opponents will be a much greater challenge inside than what Utah faced Saturday night.
There’s still one more nonconference challenge before Big 12 play starts. Saturday’s effort, though, was a step in the right direction.
“I feel like the energy for our team is a big thing for us. If one person sees the ball go in the basket, we’ve got good energy for them,” Brown said.
“It gravitates to the next person, so just us playing with high joy and a high motor just gets us better every single day, and obviously bringing it into practice. You know, it starts at practice, so that’s what we do.”
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