LOGAN — The Janet Quinney Lawson Institute for Land, Water and Air at Utah Stat4e University recently released their 4th annual report to Utah’s Governor and Legislature.
On KVNU’s For the People program last week, managing director Anna McEntire said the report highlights the interconnection of the economy and Utah’s land, water and air and how closely they are intertwined.
“There’s been a lot of research over a long time about the value of living close to high value public lands, like national parks and state parks. But even just general public open land has value.
“So, going out and being able to OHV or dirt bike or find just some open space where you can see the stars, that has a public value,” she explained.
She said what that means to people in the state is they are receiving an economic value when they live there because they get something they value.
But, also employers, they are able to factor that in to their ability to recruit people to Utah.
When it comes to research about water, obviously a lot has been conducted about the Great Salt Lake, but also about Bear Lake.
“We’ve been seeing more of these researchers chatting with each other, to bounce ideas off of each other. So, another one of our researchers, he does work on microplastics, and he’s been looking at the different beaches along Bear Lake. But then, there’s a discussion about, well, what types of microplastics are showing up in our fish species.
“And so we’ve got this whole other research question, a whole different potential problem to address that we get by bringing more of, not just policy makers together with our researchers, but our researchers together with each other.”
You can read the entire report at usu.edu/ilwa.