During the 20th century, the city of Los Angeles diverted surface water flowing into Owens Lake for water supply, transforming the large, closed-basin, saline lake into a small brine pool surrounded by dry playa. Under high winds, the exposed lakebed produced large amounts of airborne dust, resulting in the highest concentrations of airborne particulate matter with an aerodynamic diameter of 10 micrometers or less (PM10) in the United States. Since 2000, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, at the direction of the Great Basin Unified Air Pollution Control District, has been constructing and implementing dust control measures on the dry lakebed, with the objective of meeting the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency National Ambient Air Quality Standards for PM10 and the PM10 standards set by the state of California. Many of the dust control measures used at Owens Lake require large amounts of water, energy, and maintenance to sustain their performance. Effectiveness and Impacts of Dust Control Measures for Owens Lake evaluates the effectiveness of alternative solutions for their degree of PM10 reduction and the extent that they reduce use of water in controlling dust emissions. This report considers the associated energy and environmental and economic impacts of these proposed measures and assesses their durability and reliability.

Combining history and science, a sweeping look at the smallest substance and the biggest challenges facing people and the planet Four and a half billion years ago, planet Earth was formed from a vast spinning nebula of cosmic dust, the detritus left over from the birth of the sun. Within the next one hundred years, life on Earth would be profoundly changed by heat, drought, fire, and, again, dust. Dust is a legacy of twentieth-century progress and a toxic threat to life in the changing climate of the twenty-first. And yet dust is something we hardly ever consider—so small and mundane. Jay Owens’s Dust corrects that oversight, sparking curiosity and wonder. This is a book on humanity and Earth and what we’ve done to it. Dust moves from the suburbs of a thirsty Los Angeles to Oklahoma and its Dust Bowl migrants, and the desert Southwest where nuclear testing created radioactive fallout that spread across America. Owens visits the desiccated remains of the Aral Sea in Central Asia, the Greenland Ice Sheet, and beyond. Smart and beautifully written, Dust helps us understand our legacy and the challenges we face, building big ideas from the smallest particles.