News Article

iUTAH researchers Doug Jackson-Smith, Courtney Flint, Andrea Armstrong, Taya Carothers, and Nancy Mesner were all featured in a recent news story in The Herald Journal. Here’s an excerpt:

“Issues we worry about with drinking water are in areas that have a lot of arsenic or heavy metals in there,” said Douglas Jackson-Smith, a USU sociology professor and one of the professors involved in the onset of Utah’s water future survey. “Anecdotally, that’s in the west side of Salt Lake City.”

The issues with drinking water are often concerning arsenic, groundwater sources, sediments and metals, said Nancy Mesner, a professor in the department of watershed sciences at USU and an extension specialist in water quality. Logan, however, has none of that, with Mesner claiming the drinking water is “some of the best (she has) ever seen.”

Jackson-Smith, Courtney Flint, Andrea Armstrong and Taya Carothers conducted an iUTAH study on Utah’s water future, which focused on perspectives from residents in different cities regarding their water issues. They studied 23 neighborhoods across 13 cities in Salt Lake County, Cache County and Wasatch County. In Logan neighborhoods, an average of 76 percent of residents who participated in the survey rated their drinking water quality as good or very good. The sample taken in Bridger neighborhood was found to be the lowest, at only 58 percent of the residents thinking highly of their drinking water. The survey found that 10 percent of Bridger respondents classified their drinking water as bad or very bad.

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Cameron Draney looks over a spring on Thursday that supplies Logan City with some of its water. Photo credit: Eli Lucero/Herald Journal