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As part of a complex ecosystem, the Great Salt Lake is a massive depository for far more than just salt. Among the lake's other assets is the elemental metal magnesium. A very versatile metal, magnesium is used to produce many of the products we depend on every day including automobiles, electronics and fertilizers. It is also an element essential to life and is found in most dietary supplements. |
| At two thirds the density of aluminum, magnesium is light but it is also fairly strong and is the third most commonly used metal in structural applications. Also in a powder form magnesium has some very useful traits - it is highly flammable, burns very hot and is hard to extinguish once started.
Because the water of the Great Salt Lake holds a large deposit of such a useful metal it should come as no surprise that someone is extracting it from the lake. That someone is the infamous MagCorp. Established in 1972, MagCorp has been extracting magnesium from the Great Salt Lake for 40 years, and all four decades have been filled with controversy and court hearings about MagCorp's operations. MagCorp has been taken to court numerous times by The Department of Justice, the Environmental Protection Agency, and The BLM. Many years it has been named the nations worst polluter by the EPA and the facility is now a classified as Superfund Site. |
