Timothy Hawkes hopes to make more than a little splash in raising the public’s awareness during his Tuesday presentation about the Great Salt Lake and the importance of water as a natural resource for Utah.
The general counsel to the Great Salt Lake Brine Shrimp Cooperative‘s lecture will be part of the Local Speaker Series, and will start at 6 p.m. at the Park City Library‘s Jim Santy Auditorium.
Recycle Utah and the library are partners in the event, which will see Hawkes talk about the Great Salt Lake and its ramifications on the local, hemispheric and global levels.
“I intend to talk about the lake’s impacts on birds as they migrate through Great Salt Lake on their way to places as far as Siberia and South America,” he said. “There’s also the global impact as you look at the brine shrimp industry where the brine shrimp eggs that are harvested on the Great Salt Lake are processed and shipped all over the world, where they play a critical role in aqua-culture. They feed a growing and hungry world.”
During his address, Hawkes will also discuss the challenges the Great Salt Lake has faced and faces throughout the extremely dry seasons.
“I’ll principally talk about what can be done about the situation,” he said. “Working on natural resources like the Great Salt Lake is very challenging work, but deeply rewarding work. I enjoy having conversations about the lake and thinking creatively about how we can solve the challenges that the state faces when it comes to a resource as scarce and important as water.”
Hawkes, who served in the Utah House of Representatives from 2015 to 2022, will also talk about the record-breaking snowfall and its effect on the lake.
“It’s almost that the lake and the people who are concerned about the lake are breathing a sigh of relief,” he said. “The situation was getting pretty dire towards the end of last year. So having the snowpack we did, the whole ecosystem seems healthier and happier.”
During his visits to the Great Salt Lake, Hawkes has seen the positive results of the runoff.
“We see that reflected in the brine shrimp, birds, brine flies, and all of the species that rely on the Great Salt Lake,” he said. “You can see them all doing better due to the increased flows.”
Still, Hawkes warns that the lake isn’t out of danger.
“I think a little bit of caution is advised, because the dynamics that got us into that situation are likely to persist,” he said. “We are grateful for what we got, but realistically, that probably bought us a year or two. So, if we go back into a dry cycle, we’ll go back into another serious circumstance. So, I also need to address the notion that this one water year will solve the problems, when in reality, we just crawled back to where we were just a few years ago.”
The additional year or two, however, have given Hawkes and others more time to work on contingency plans to help the lake.
“The elevations that we reached during this past dry cycle were unprecedented in recorded history, even though we were close in the 1960s,” he said. “So we are trying to refine the tools and solutions to help protect the lake from getting into those critical ranges.”
Still, those tools and solutions haven’t been perfected, and they are also expensive and time consuming, according to Hawkes.
“One of the great things about this water year is that it bought us time to implement those plans for the lake,” he said.
Hawkes, the former state director for Trout Unlimited, a non-profit conservation group, will also use his time during the speaker series to clear up some misconceptions and get people interested in the Great Salt Lake.
“For years it was just getting people to care, because the lake has impacts that people haven’t historically appreciated,” he said. “They don’t think about the tie to air quality or the snow pack through lake-effect snow.”
The public also doesn’t really think about the lake in terms of every-day technology, as well as its relationship to local water and food supplies, Hawkes said.
“Most people still don’t know that cell phones contain magnesium from the Great Salt Lake, and that the nectarines you buy at Costco were fertilized by the potash from the Great Salt Lake,” he said. “And while the awareness is growing about these connections, we still have a ways to go.”
Hawkes is looking forward to the opportunity to reach people through the library’s speaker series, which is sponsored by the Friends of the Park City Library.
“I think it’s great when libraries act as places to disseminate knowledge,” he said. “I like interacting with people, and hopefully empowering these people to make a positive difference. On a topic like the Great Salt Lake and water, which are so important to water, I think it’s great the library can be a forum for that kind of conversation.”