A Boat That Cleans Utah Lake May End Up in a Parking Lot
Forty thousand dollars. That is the gap between Utah Lake keeping a machine that has been pulling algae out of the water since 2022, and that machine spending next summer parked on a trailer at Utah Valley University.
The boat is 34 feet long and 10 feet wide, built by UVU students and faculty around a single job: strip harmful algae out of the places where people actually touch the water. It runs a series of hoses, tanks, and filters, and it moves close to 100,000 gallons a day. Kevin Shurtleff, the UVU associate professor who came up with the project, told KSL this week that one pass drops algae concentration roughly 60 percent.
That is a measured result from a tool that is already built, already crewed by two UVU students, and already on the water. Funding has come from a partnership between the State of Utah, UVU, and the Utah Lake Authority. The barge team says the Authority has told them it cannot cover another $40,000 for next season. The boat runs through August. After that, the team plans to make its case to state lawmakers.
Small money, real equipment
Forty thousand dollars is the price of a used work truck. It is a rounding error against most water treatment budgets, which is Shurtleff’s own point about the barge: “At $40,000, it’s a deal compared to other treatment options.”
This is not a story about anyone doing something wrong. The Utah Lake Authority is a small agency carrying a very large lake, and a tight budget forces real choices between good options. It is a story about how thin the funding is for the unglamorous end of conservation. A tool that works, with published numbers behind it, can still lose its slot because nobody has a line item for it.
Anyone building this kind of capability in Utah recognizes the shape of that problem immediately.
Two layers of the same lake
The barge treats the top of the water column, where swimmers, paddlers, and dogs come into contact with the bloom. That work matters and the timing shows why. On July 13 the Utah County Health Department posted harmful algal bloom warnings at seven locations, including Lincoln Marina Beach, American Fork Marina, Lindon Beach Marina, Lindon Marina, and the Saratoga Springs Marina picnic area. Those are exactly the high use spots the barge was designed to spot clean.
The lake bottom is a separate problem, and nothing is treating it.
Algal blooms are driven mostly by nutrient loading, phosphorus and nitrogen. A sunken vehicle is a different kind of contamination sitting in the same water. It holds gasoline, and gasoline carries benzene, a compound that dissolves readily in water and is a recognized human carcinogen. It holds engine oil. It holds a couple of gallons of ethylene glycol antifreeze, which is sweet tasting and toxic to animals that drink it. It holds a lead acid battery. None of that stops leaching because the surface looks clear, and none of it shows up in a satellite image of a bloom.
The work below the barge
Fathom Restoration is a disabled-veteran-led Utah 501(c)(3) nonprofit focused on lake cleanup and the recovery of submerged vehicles, vessels, and debris from Utah’s lakes and waterways. We are a diver organization first, because that is where this work starts. Real lake cleanup means reaching the bottom, not skimming the surface.
Utah Lake is getting a serious, measurable effort at the surface, and that effort is now asking for $40,000 to keep going. Below it sits a layer that no agency budget currently accounts for at all.
If you know of a sunken vehicle, boat, or debris pile on the bottom of a Utah waterway, report it at fathomrestoration.org.
Fathom Restoration is a disabled-veteran-led Utah 501(c)(3) nonprofit dedicated to lake cleanup and the recovery of submerged vehicles, vessels, and debris from Utah’s lakes and waterways. Donate / Volunteer / Report a vehicle at fathomrestoration.org.
Source: https://www.ksl.com/article/51603841/funding-uncertainty-threatens-future-of-uvus-utah-lake-algae-barge
