Great Salt Lake lawsuit update – law professors agree with our claim

In September of 2023, we announced a lawsuit with other conservation and community groups, targeting the state for their failure to protect public interests by their mismanagement of one of our greatest natural assets, Great Salt Lake. 

Earlier this year, the state filed an attempt to have our lawsuit dismissed. 

Dozens of law professors agree with our claims that the state violated the public trust doctrine by not protecting Great Salt Lake. The public trust doctrine requires the state to protect cultural or natural resources for public use, including bodies of water, land, artifacts or wildlife. 

“Rather than address that problem, the state has instead focused on ‘trying to persuade individual water users to undertake voluntary measures to reduce their consumption,’” the professors write, and were quoted in a Utah News Dispatch article. 

“This court can correct the state’s crabbed view of the PTD by requiring the state to consider the effect on the lake’s ecological integrity of the upper basin diversions of the public’s water,” a Town Lift article quotes. 

Full Utah News Dispatch article.
Full Town Lift article.

More about whats causing issues with the lake, and it’s impact on local communities here.