How will Utah save the Great Salt Lake?

A proposed Great Salt Lake Authority would centralize management. Grants for high-tech “agriculture optimization” could decrease farmers' water use by 30%. Modernizing water rights law could keep water in streams and deliver more inflow to the lake. The Utah Legislature began its 2023 session on Jan.



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The state's Republican governor, Spencer Cox, has suspended new claims to water in the Great Salt Lake basin and appointed a commissioner to oversee response to the lake crisis. Last year, Utah's legislature passed several conservation measures, including a $40m trust to support lake preservation projects.

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Water experts say it's going to take more than one big year to fill the Great Salt Lake. SALT LAKE CITY — Ever since The Great Salt Lake hit its lowest water level on record in November 2022, concerns over things like arsenic in the exposed lake bed have only grown.

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However, the most deleterious effect of the Great Salt Lake drying up is that the air surrounding Salt Lake City could sporadically become poisonous. Since the bed of the Great Salt Lake holds high levels of dangerous particles like arsenic, antimony, copper, zirconium, and various heavy metals.

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One of the world's largest hypersaline lakes, the Great Salt Lake is on the verge of collapse due to climate change, drought, and population pressures that have reduced inflows and shrunk the lake by more than two-thirds.

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New analysis says Great Salt Lake can be saved, but not without great effort, and expense.

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A recent report found that the lake could essentially disappear within five years. As a key stopover for migrating birds, the lake's loss could undermine whole ecosystems.

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Lake Levels Due to its shallowness (an average of 14 feet deep and a maximum of 35 feet deep), the water level can fall dramatically during dry years and rise during wet years. When snowpack melts in the spring, the lake usually rises about 2 feet. However, record snowpack in 2023 triggered a rise of 5.5 feet!

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Compass Minerals announced in 2021 it was seeking to extract lithium from the Great Salt Lake under a pilot program. The company, which has a plant in Ogden, said it was utilizing new methods of extracting the precious resource within the ambient brine of the Great Salt Lake.

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SALT LAKE CITY (ABC4) — The Utah Division of Water Resources is sharing good news about the impacts all the rain is having on the Great Salt Lake, whose water levels reached a historic low last year.

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The state of Utah owns basically most of the Great Salt Lake, including Antelope Island, Fremont Island, Gunnison Island, the Ogden and Farmington bay wetland areas, along with the entire lakebed.

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The best place to swim or float in the lake is at Antelope Island State Park, where white oolitic sand beaches provide easy access to the lake without the brine flies that are prevalent on other areas of the shoreline. The beach area also has showers to rinse off the salty water.

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A new scientific report warns the lake is on track to disappear in the next five years, unless water use is cut by as much as 50% annually.

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Utah officials have pushed the Great Salt Lake to the brink of an ecological collapse because they allowed upstream water to be diverted for decades to farmers growing alfalfa, hay and other crops, according to a lawsuit filed Wednesday by a coalition of environmental groups.

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Because of the abundant algae and halophiles, as well as the high salinity, the lake does not support fish — but it teems with brine shrimp and brine flies, which provide essential nutrition for migrating birds.

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