Report details the state’s ‘meaningful’ progress getting more water to the Great Salt Lake

BY: KYLE DUNPHEY - JANUARY 15, 2025 5:40 PM

The shores of the Great Salt Lake near Syracuse are pictured on Tuesday, May 21, 2024. (Photo by Spenser Heaps for Utah News Dispatch)

For the last several years, Utah’s lawmakers and environmental officials have made getting water to the Great Salt Lake a priority, through policies like letting the state lease water rights from farmers, or installing new equipment to measure water flows.

Now, a new report details the progress and impacts some of those policies are having, calling the work done so far “meaningful.”

On Tuesday, the Great Salt Lake Strike Team issued its 2025 data and insights summary, released just in time for lawmakers to review for the upcoming General Legislative Session, which starts next week.

The Great Salt Lake hit a historic low in 2022, bottoming out at 4,188.5 feet. Lawmakers and state officials prioritized the lake that following legislative session — then the winters of 2023 and 2024 brought above-average snowfall, causing the lake levels to rebound slightly. On Wednesday, both the north and south arms hovered around 4,192 feet, still several feet below the “ecologically healthy” level of 4,198 feet.

Formed in 2023, the Great Salt Lake Strike Team is made up of researchers from the University of Utah and Utah State University, working with officials from the Utah departments of Natural Resources, Agriculture and Food, Environmental Quality and more.

The data-heavy 28-page report released this week outlines everything from the economic benefit of the Great Salt Lake, to locations of the dust “hotspots” on the dry lakebed that pose a health risk to the Wasatch Front, to models for future scenarios, and more.

The report also details some of the progress made in the last year that delivered more water to the lake. Consider this:

• More than 288,000 acre-feet of water has been approved to flow to the lake, through users either leasing or donating their water right to the state. That’s enough water to fill both Jordanelle and Rockport reservoirs, although the report notes that’s just what’s been approved, and doesn’t represent the actual amount of water that’s been delivered.
• The Legislature is spending $1 million in one-time funds and $1 million in annual funds to install measurement infrastructure so the Utah Division of Water Rights can see exactly how much water is flowing to the lake. An additional $3 million from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and U.S. Geological Survey is also going toward measurement equipment.
• In addition to funding for water monitoring, state and federal governments have thrown nearly $100 million at the lake for various projects, including $50 million from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation for conservation; $5.4 million from the state for wetland conservation; $22 million from the state for Great Salt Lake water infrastructure projects; $15 million from the state to the Great Salt Lake Commissioner’s Office to help lease water; and $1.5 million to start a state-funded study exploring ways to deliver more water from Utah Lake to the Great Salt Lake.
• Compass Minerals and Morton Salt, which both operate on the lake, donated a total of 255,298 acre-feet of water to the state. Compass Minerals is also relinquishing about 65,000 acres of leased land to the state for conservation purposes.
• Lawmakers in 2024 passed a number of bills to help the lake, including tightened regulations and taxes on mineral extraction, allowing agricultural water users to sell leased water and restricting the use of overhead sprinklers for new government construction in the Great Salt Lake Basin.
• There have also been some environmental wins. Brine shrimp populations are rebounding, with a 50% increase in egg numbers compared to last year. American white pelicans returned to their nesting sites on the lake. And the state removed 15,600 acres of phragmites, an invasive plant.

The report notes that the state has made “meaningful progress.” And while it clarifies that the report is purely data-focused and doesn’t make policy recommendations, it does lay out “potential policy levers.”

That includes greater incentives for water leasing. The state made several new options available for water right holders, including letting farmers lease water for a portion of the year, water banking (which gives water users more flexibility over leasing agreements) and applications allowing users to quantify water saved through optimization projects.

But according to the report, the state hasn’t yet received any applications for these three programs.

The Utah Legislature also recently subsidized the installation of secondary water meters, so water districts know how much they’re using — those meters are often associated with water savings. The report recommends water districts in the Great Salt Lake Basin donate or lease that saved water for the lake.

“All indications demonstrate that delivering more water to the lake is a far more cost-effective solution than managing the impacts of a lake at a perpetually low level,” said Brian Steed, the co-chair of the strike team and Great Salt Lake Commissioner. “We can invest time and financial resources now or pay much later. Fortunately, we have great data and a balanced and workable plan to succeed.”