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John Hollenhorst reportingAn ambitious hundred-million dollar plan to clean up polluted water underneath the Salt Lake Valley is getting another shot at winning public approval.
The original plan was shot down by a barrage of public criticism.
To critics, the original plan was a bit like robbing Peter to pay Paul-- contaminate one body of water, the Jordan River, in order to clean up another.
Now, a new plan is out for public comment that lets the Jordan off the hook.
The contaminants are out of sight, underground. In a vast aquifer underlying much of the Salt Lake Valley, a plume of sulfates has spread out from Kennecott's copper mine.
The plan is to pump the water out over a period of many years, filter it and use it for drinking water. But what to do with the stuff that's filtered out?
It will include a concentrated dose of selenium. That's not Kennecott's fault; it's a naturally-occuring trace-metal. But it's known to cause birth defects in wildlife.
Jeff Salt/Great Salt Lake Keeper: "You know, two-headed ducks and five-armed animals. Just all kinds of crazy birth defects in animals."
Environmentalist Jeff Salt opposed the original cleanup plan because the selenium would have flowed to the Jordan River and its bird-friendly wetlands near the Great Salt Lake.
Jeff Salt/Great Salt Lake Keeper: "I think there was a lot of suspicion that they were trying to ram this through on the quick and dirty and cheap and basically not pay attention to public interest."
Reporter: "And now you're feeling better?"
Salt: "A lot better."
The new plan avoids the Jordan River entirely. The by-products would flow to Kennecott's tailings pile in Magna. Or they would flow directly into the Great Salt Lake through a pipeline extended several miles off-shore.
Richard Bay/ Jordan Valley Water Conservancy District: "That's the one we would most like to accomplish. But our board of trustees has agreed that we would only pursue that if we've answered the questions sufficiently within the next two years with our selenium studies."
The studies are also part of the plan; the first ever to find out if selenium is still dangerous if it's diluted by an inland sea of salt water.
Richard Bay: "The main concern is bio-accumulation. In other words, what are the effects two and three steps down the food chain, and specifically to the bird population?"
The controversy has centered on the waste side of the ledger.
Now, officials hope the public will focus on the positive side: taking unhealthy groundwater and turning it into clean drinking water for tens of thousands of people.
