Dick Buehler, Utah state forester and DFFSL director, finds Atwood's accusations perplexing. "A lot more people than just Genevieve are interested in the same things (correct management of the lake)," he said.

"DFFSL has been a resource management agency for years and years. We're not just a fire agency. We do fight fires in the summer. That's part of the job," he said, likening DFFSL's mission to the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management, which despite seasonal firefighting responsibilities remain land managers first and foremost.

Nor does he think office staffing is causing sovereign lands to be shortchanged. "I've got three full-time and three part-time people in my office who wake up every morning thinking about sovereign lands management," Buehler said, adding that DFFSL just awarded $200,000 in research grants for management of the Great Salt Lake ecosystem.

Buehler said other resources at his disposal are the Great Salt Lake technical team as well as the ability to draw on the expertise of other state agencies with just a phone or office call.

Champion needed

Atwood is unconvinced. "If you're a wise steward do you really want to find yourself in such a state of crisis that you need an Obama approach to solve the problem?" asked Atwood, firing another broadside DFFSL's way. "The Great Salt Lake — actually all of the state's sovereign lands — needs a champion."

Atwood has a vocal ally in like-minded de Freitas, who complains DFFSL has an abysmal batting average as the lake's keeper.

"We're looking at the remnants of an ecosystem (Lake Bonneville) that has been around since the Pleistocene Age," de Freitas said, wondering aloud if there shouldn't there be a plan in place at the state level to perpetuate that legacy. Rather, she said, her experience has been that management of the Great Salt Lake and other sovereign lands is just an afterthought for DFFSL.

Buehler counters that such a blueprint exists: the Great Salt Lake Comprehensive Management Plan, which is being closely followed by his office.

"We have a management plan in place. The plan is a mandate for management of the lake regardless of the agency," he said, adding that the decade-old plan is due for an update soon.

Here is finally something he and de Freitas can agree on. She said the lake's comprehensive management plan badly needs revising so that it reflects new realities that weren't even on radar 10 years ago, such as levels of mercury, selenium and nutrients. Yet another reason, she proposes, to take it slow on GSL Minerals' expansion request.

Unintended outcome

If GSL Minerals' plan reaches fruition, Atwood said, it could have unintended consequences of potentially raising the lake's salinity or lowering the overall lake level below recent drought levels.