Opinion: End Wasatch Front Gravel Mining
A recent opinion piece in the Daily Utah Chronicle perfectly outlined the case for ending gravel mining along the Wasatch Front, our state’s most populated and highly polluted region. Elizabeth Griffee starts by explaining the current gravel situation in Utah, “Utah mines and quarries produce 13,000 metric tons of crushed stone and 36,300 metric tons of sand and gravel. This aggregate produces 49,008 miles of public road across the U.S., sourced from 235 different mines around The Wasatch Front.”
If that sounds like more than enough, it’s because it is. The legislature’s own study just this last year determined there is no shortage of gravel and aggregate, there won’t be for years to come. Despite that reality, the legislature and out of state company, Granite Construction, are determined to ease the path forward for the highly polluting industry along the Wasatch Front.
“In 2024, Utah ranked fourth nationally in toxic chemical releases. Mining was responsible for 80% of this, exposing us to lethal chemicals such as arsenic, cadmium, copper, lead, selenium and zinc through our air and water,” Griffee wrote in her opinion piece. You may recognize some of the same chemicals in that list as ones that are garnering concern about Great Salt Lake shrinking. The legislature has acknowledged the threat these chemicals pose from the lakebed dust, yet year after year produce legislation to minimize restrictions from industries producing them near our communities.
She expertly concludes, “As the far-reaching effects of climate catastrophe slowly suffocate humanity, it is time for all levels of government to start taking environmentalism seriously because we do not have any other options. We do not have the time or the non-renewable resources left to cling to mineral extraction as economic scaffolding.
Resist efforts that paint industries that have always been unsustainable as necessary evils. We have no choice but to do better. It’s time to demand that public health and the well-being of our planet be taken as seriously as industry lobbying.”
Find Griffee’s full opinion piece in the Daily Utah Chronicle here.