A few bills addressed the Great Salt Lake in this legislative season, according to KSL.
One of the bills that passed and is awaiting Governor Cox’s approval is a law essentially tightens regulations on mineral extraction from the lake so the industries’ water consumption is better managed. It also guarantees that revenue generated by mineral sales will be allocated back into the lake for conservation and management efforts, according to lawmakers.
“Over the past few years, the state, local governments, private sector and everyday citizens have done their part to ensure the Great Salt Lake is around for future generations,” Snider said in a statement on Thursday. “The bill is another huge step in the right direction as we work to keep water in the lake.”
Comment down below what you think about keeping the Great Salt Lake around for future generations.
Anti-abortion groups, attorneys general from 25 states and more than 140 members of Congress have signed on to dozens of briefs to the U.S. Supreme Court during the past two weeks, encouraging the justices to revert use and prescribing of the medication abortion pill mifepristone to what was in place prior to 2016, according to the Daily Herald.
Utah is one of the states that supports these briefs moving through the court.
On Saturday, thousands of tumbleweeds blew into Eagle Mountain neighborhoods, rolling into yards and blocking streets along the city’s eastern edge, according to KSL.
“If a home is buried in tumbleweeds 6 feet deep and there are thousands of them, that’s where the city really wants to be of help,” said Tyler Maffitt, communications manager for Eagle Mountain.
“If you have just a few tumbleweeds on your property, you are going to be responsible, so ask your neighbors, ask your family, ask your friends to help you out,” Maffitt said.
In some of the hardest-hit neighborhoods, city workers were seen using backhoes to help residents flatten the tumbleweeds once they were in the dumpsters.
Community members gathered at the Capitol early Monday to urge Governor Cox to veto a bill meant to arm more teachers. A measure the Legislature passed last week that would incentivize more teachers to carry guns, in part by providing participating educators with near-blanket liability protection should they open fire on school grounds, according to The Tribune.
One of the protesters, Sinia Maile, lost two teens the 23-year-old called her “brothers” to gun violence two years ago in a West Valley City shooting near Hunter High School, according to The Tribune.
“In the same legislative session, our lawmakers did not trust universities to hire diverse, competent staff,” Maile argued Monday. “… Now they want us to trust [teachers] with a gun.”
For weeks at Utah Natural Meat, raw milk gushed into the dirt. Normally, the raw, unpasteurized milk from the last dairy farm in Salt Lake County would be bottled and sold to customers so eager to buy it that they’d line up an hour before the store opened. Customers continued to ask for it, owner Shayn Bowler said, but he had to tell them no. His state permit to sell raw milk had been suspended.
Three weeks passed, until mid-October, when the Utah Department of Agriculture and Food notified Bowler that they found campylobacter in his milk. The bacterium had sickened 12 people, one of whom was hospitalized, according to the Salt Lake County Health Department.
“Obviously,” said Bowler, a fifth-generation farmer, “if there is something unsafe about it, we want to address that immediately.”
But working with the Utah Department of Agriculture and Food, Bowler said, was a cumbersome process that nearly put him out of business.
Some of his customers, who tout raw milk’s nutritional benefits, were so frustrated by what they said was the department’s lack of transparency that they complained to their state representative. State Rep. Cheryl Acton (R-Salt Lake County) now plans to introduce legislation that would make the permit suspension process clearer for not only farmers, but the public as well.
*Content for this article curated from other sources.
