Legislators to Vote on Bill to Permanently Dry Up 40% of the Great Salt Lake
Joint Press Release with Utah Rivers Council.
Bill demonstrates Americans cannot trust Utah to save the Great Salt Lake and dispels the myth that the state has any plan to do so.
A Utah legislative committee is meeting today to consider a bill to force the drying of the Great Salt Lake’s North Arm, which represents 40% of the lake’s surface area. The new legislation would use a water control structure to further shrink the North Arm of the Great Salt Lake, which represents roughly 40% of the lake’s surface area.
If the bill passes the committee as expected, a special session will be held to further consider the measure. Utah has failed to pass meaningful legislation to save the lake over the last 25 years, and this bill demonstrates Utah’s failure to safeguard the lake. This bill completely dispels the hype that Utah has a plan to restore the Great Salt Lake to the minimum healthy water level of 4,198, 6-7 feet above current levels.
The Great Salt Lake as it may look in 2027 given
Utah’s failed water management policies and excessive
upstream water diversions. Utah is America’s most
wasteful municipal water user (per capita) but has refused
to pass meaningful legislation to reduce upstream
diversions or even set a statewide lake elevation goal.
“Americans need to know they can’t trust Utah to save the Great Salt Lake or the 12 million
migratory birds it supports,” said Zach Frankel, executive director for the Utah Rivers Council’s
Great Salt Lake Waterkeeper. “Utah is more interested in misleading people about the lake’s future than it is in implementing the wishes of constituents who want to deliver more water to the lake,” Frankel added.
“Make no mistake, this is the opposite of protecting public health and saving the lake ecosystem,” said Dr. Brian Moench, president of the Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment. “It is supremely ironic that Congress just granted Northern Utah residents compensation for being nuclear radiation ‘downwinders,’ but now the Utah Legislature is permanently creating the next generation of toxic Great Salt Lakebed dust downwinders,” said Moench.
The legislation orders the Utah Division of Forestry, Fire, and State Lands to raise the water control berm in the causeway crossing the Great Salt Lake when the southern side of the lake is at 4,190 feet above sea level, and removes the existing provision that this be a temporary action. This railroad causeway berm divides the northern end of the lake from its southern end, where all the lake’s tributary rivers enter, so this bill will seal the North Arm against inflows.
The bill removes an existing provision requiring water levels in the North Arm of the Great Salt Lake to be restored within 18 months after the North Arm is cut off (Line 90 of the bill). This provision would thereby allow Utah to permanently dry up the North Arm.
“Utahns were told a month ago that cutting off the North Arm would only be temporary, but this bill makes it permanent,” said Frankel. “Utahns need more than hopes and prayers from elected officials to save the Great Salt Lake,” he added.
Over the last 25 years, a number of meaningful bills have been proposed to protect water flows of the Great Salt Lake, but the Utah Legislature has refused to pass them out of committee. A series of largely meaningless bills have passed since 2022 which do not help the lake, although an extensive marketing campaign has been waged to convince Utahns that Utah is serious about saving the Great Salt Lake. The Utah Legislature has passed many bills that are harmful to the lake over the last 5 years as well.