I visited the Great Salt Lake for the first time in 2021, just one year before its waters dropped to record low levels. What I saw was both beautiful and alarming.
From Antelope Island’s Buffalo Point, I took in a panoramic view of glistening water framed by snowcapped peaks, and vast stretches of dusty, exposed lakebed. At lake level, I walked nearly 20 minutes — stepping over scattered bird carcasses and bleached microbial mats — from where the water used to be to where the water was now. The crisis was visceral: I could see it in the receding shoreline, feel it on the crunch of playa underfoot, smell it in the scent of decay and taste it with every breath of lakebed dust on the wind.
The Great Salt Lake was drying up, and it seemed to be all anyone could talk about. After decades of over-appropriating water at the lake’s expense, it appeared that the state might finally respond to public pressure and take action to conserve Utah’s dwindling water resources. But two unusually snowy winters gave the lake a temporary reprieve, and state leaders have seemingly paused meaningful action until the lake is once again on the brink of catastrophe.
My most recent visit to the lake earlier this winter felt hauntingly similar to my first, but with one key difference. This time, there is no fanfare — and state officials are quietly draining the Great Salt Lake.
Several years ago, state leaders created the Office of the Great Salt Lake Commissioner to coordinate statewide conservation and management efforts; now, they’re refusing to adequately fund it. In 2022, lawmakers nicknamed the legislative session “the year of water” to emphasize their purported dedication to the issue. This year, House Speaker Mike Schultz announced a “pause” on major water legislation, and the Legislature killed bills that would have studied water use by golf courses, reduced overhead spray irrigation and water intensive turf, and allowed conservation plans to commit available water to the lake. And despite a 2022 moratorium on new water allocations in the Great Salt Lake Basin, the state has since approved over 2,500 acre-feet of new water rights — an equivalent amount to that used annually by 5,000 households.
It turns out that the governor’s moratorium contained numerous loopholes that will further reduce the amount of water flowing to the already depleted lake. These loopholes included an allowance for new water rights in supposedly “small amounts” that cumulatively add up to big water losses, as well as geographic exclusions for new water rights around the lake’s North Arm, which is rapidly becoming a sacrifice zone of toxic salinity. The majority of new allocations are for irrigation and livestock, including for a company linked to Speaker Schultz.
Between legislative foot-dragging and continued administrative approvals for diversion of an already over-allocated water system, state officials have demonstrated that they will not voluntarily protect the Great Salt Lake. When left to their own devices, they repeatedly make harmful concessions that sacrifice the lake’s health — and the well-being of millions of lakeshore residents.
This is why a coalition of environmental and community groups has asked a court to affirm that the state has a legal obligation to protect the Great Salt Lake. Rooted in the public trust doctrine, this obligation compels the state to preserve the lake for public benefit.
In a bid to dismiss the case, state leaders argued in court for their supposed right to “eliminate” the Great Salt Lake entirely. But last week, a judge largely denied the state’s motions to dismiss, allowing the lawsuit to proceed to trial.
In her decision, Judge Laura Scott stated: “Despite hundreds of pages of briefing, Defendants have failed to explain how the public trust doctrine can possibly protect the acknowledged ‘public trust values of navigation, commerce, and fishing’ if there is no obligation to preserve the waters themselves.”
This ruling sends a powerful message: Protecting the Great Salt Lake is not a choice — it is a legal obligation. The future of the lake, and the health of millions of Utahns, depend on it. Despite the state’s efforts to evade its public trust duty, we are heading to trial with renewed hope that it will finally be held accountable — to the lake and the people of Utah.