Rick Bowmer / Associated Press
Angelic Lemmon, a park ranger for Utah’s Department of Natural Resources, walks across reef-like structures exposed by the receding waters at the Great Salt Lake on Sept. 28, 2022, near Salt Lake City.
Monday, Nov. 27, 2023 | 2 a.m.
A Utah nonprofit group is proposing legal protections and water conservation measures like Nevada’s to save the rapidly drying Great Salt Lake.
The United States Geological Survey considers a water level of 4,198 feet the “minimum healthy level” for the lake, but it’s mostly been lower than that since 2000.
Today, the lake sits at 4,192 feet, according to the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources. It has lost 73% of its water and 60% of its surface area since 1850, according to a 2023 Brigham Young University report.
The exposed portions of the lakebed are sources of dust that carry pollutants such as arsenic, lead, other metals and organic contaminants.
The Utah Rivers Council, founded in 1994, said 330 migratory bird species, totaling 8 million to 10 million birds a year, rely on the 360,000 acres of wetlands surrounding the lake.
The council last month proposed the 4200 Project, a guidebook of 12 policy solutions aimed at raising the lake’s level to 4,200 feet.
According to the guidebook, the lake will lose roughly 328,000-acre feet of water per year if nothing changes. An acre-foot of water is enough to cover an acre of land 1 foot deep, or about 326,000 gallons.
The project would take at least five years to implement, said Zach Frankel, the council’s executive director. The first step is setting concrete goals for how much water to deliver to the lake each year, something the state government has not done, he said.
“What we need to do is follow the lead of other states that allow individuals and especially land conservation organizations to permanently designate waters as instream flows to the Great Salt Lake,” he said.
The lake reached a record low of 4,188 feet last fall but recovered rapidly in June thanks to record-breaking winter snowfall.
Water flowed into the south arm of the lake, but the lake has dropped two feet si
Water flowed into the south arm of the lake, but the lake has dropped two feet since then.
“(In 2022) there was an air of desperation in Utah about the Great Salt Lake,” Frankel said. “In summer of 2023, because of the big runoff, there was a lot less of a sense of urgency.”
He said he anticipates that urgency will return by 2024 with an anticipated all-time low water level for the lake unless there is another miracle snowfall.
“We can’t rely on Mother Nature to solve the problems that residents have created in Utah, Idaho and Wyoming upstream of the Great Salt Lake,” he said.
The project
Frankel said three agencies can designate instream flows into the lake — the Utah State Parks Department, Utah Division of Forestry, and Fire and State Lands, and the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources.
He said they could be susceptible to political pressure and influenced to allow more water diversions upstream of the lake along the Bear, Weber and Jordan rivers, the tributaries that provide about 60% of the lake’s annual inflows.
The report suggested using money set aside for one such development, the Bear River Development, for conservation efforts instead. The $2.9 billion project would divert 25% to 30% of the Bear River away from the Great Salt Lake.
He said letting nonprofits fund these organizations to acquire water rights stands a better chance of preserving the lake than leaving it to the Utah State Parks Department, Utah Division of Forestry, Fire and State Lands and the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources.
The project’s other suggestions would sound familiar to most Las Vegas residents. They include reducing water use in cities, giving the Great Salt Lake legal protections, rerouting unused agricultural water to the lake, introducing more efficient irrigation and cutting down on water waste over the next five years. Agriculture uses 80% of all water in the Great Salt Lake basin.
“Utah simply is not acting fast enough to do what is necessary to save the Great Salt Lake,” Frankel said.
Other suggestions include phasing out property taxes that water districts collect, enacting a drought contingency plan similar to ones other Colorado River Basin states use, passing more effective municipal conservation goals, removing nonfunctional grass and repairing water leaks in municipal systems statewide.
He said municipalities touted small water conservation victories during the summer of 2022, when the lake was at its lowest point.
“It’s fine to celebrate people and institutions stepping forward to deliver water. We’re certainly not trying to criticize that,” Frankel said. “But that’s the problem with not having a goal.”
Record conservation
Environmental law organization Earthjustice filed a lawsuit against the state in September on behalf of Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment, the American Bird Conservancy, the Center for Biological Diversity, the Sierra Club and the Utah Rivers Council. In the suit, Earthjustice argued the state violated the public trust doctrine by failing to act to protect the lake.
During Gov. Spencer Cox’s monthly press conference in September, he said Utah’s water conservation efforts are heading in the “right direction” overall.
Earlier this year, the Utah Legislature created a new Office of the Great Salt Lake Commissioner and Cox appointed Brian Steed executive director of the Janet Quinney Lawson Institute for Land, Water and Air at Utah State University, to the role. Steed’s job is to work with all stakeholders to protect the lake.
Cox said the state has done more in the past two years than ever before to preserve the Great Salt Lake and water resources.
“There are some destructive voices out there that just love to tear down and hammer anything that we do,” he said. “Working together is how we’re going to solve the lake.”
Catastrophe
Deeda Seed, a senior campaigner with the Center for Biological Diversity, said the state of Utah is “actively taking steps” away from protecting the largest remaining wetland ecosystem in the American West.
“Scientists are saying (we need) between 1.5 (million) and
2 million-acre feet (of stream inflows) or more a year. These gestures are insufficient,” Seed said. “There’s active harm being subsidized.”
She cited the Utah Inland Port Authority as an example of Utah’s government doing more environmental harm than good.
The inland port authority plans to subsidize industrial development on 42,000 acres near the Great Salt Lake, according to a report from the center, which would destroy the wetlands.
“It’s clear to us the state isn’t meeting its public trust obligation under the Utah State Constitution to manage this public resource in the way that they should be,” Seed said.
Seed said the lake’s fate has human health and ecological implications for the entire Intermountain West, which encompasses everything between the Rocky Mountains to the east and the Sierra Nevada and Cascades to the west.
“These things are intertwined and go together. You can’t separate them out from each other,” Seed said. “That’s not how nature works.”
rhiannon.saegert@gmg vegas.com / 702-948-7836 / @Missmusetta
