Saving the Great Salt Lake

Why this matters

The Great Salt Lake is more than the namesake of our capital city. It’s a working part of Utah’s economy, its air, and its weather.

The lake supports billions of dollars in economic activity and thousands of jobs, from mineral companies to the brine shrimp harvest that supplies a large share of the world’s fish farms. Water evaporating off the lake helps build the “Greatest Snow on Earth” that our ski industry depends on. About 10 million migrating birds stop here every year.

And the lake is in trouble. In 2022 it hit its lowest level ever recorded. It came back a little, then fell again: it ended 2025 at its third-lowest level since record-keeping began in 1903, roughly seven feet below the minimum level scientists consider healthy. About 800 square miles of lakebed is now dry and exposed to the wind, upwind of the 2.5 million people who live on the Wasatch Front. That lakebed holds arsenic and other metals.

If we let the lake keep shrinking, the cost to Utah could reach tens of billions of dollars, and thousands of jobs, over the next two decades. This isn’t an environmental side issue. It’s a kitchen-table issue for every family along the Wasatch Front.

~7 ftbelow the lake's minimum healthy level

800 sq miof dry lakebed exposed to the wind

$1.9Ba year in economic activity, and 7,700 jobs

10 millionmigrating birds depend on the lake each year

Sources: U.S. Geological Survey and the Great Salt Lake Strike Team (2026). South arm elevations: 4,188.5 ft (2022) and 4,191.1 ft (2025).

Utah has started. Now we have to finish.

Utah deserves credit. In the last few years the state stopped punishing farmers who conserve water under old “use it or lose it” rules, made water left in rivers for the lake a legal use, started leasing water from willing farmers, managed the lake’s salt levels back to a healthy range, and struck a deal with the largest mineral company on the lake to cut its water use when the lake is low. Between 2021 and 2025, nearly 400,000 acre-feet of water was dedicated and delivered to the lake.

Utahns have stepped up, too, and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has led by example. In 2023 it made the largest permanent water donation in Utah’s history: more than 20,000 acre-feet sent to the lake every year, forever. It has since donated or leased nearly 30,000 acre-feet in all, switched its meetinghouses to water-wise landscaping, and just last month gave $3 million to clear the invasive plants that choke the lake’s wetlands and soak up its water. That’s the kind of leadership every business, farm, city, and congregation in Utah can follow.

It’s working, but it isn’t enough yet. The state’s own team of scientists estimates the lake needs about 800,000 more acre-feet of water every year to climb back to a healthy level, and the sooner we get there, the less damage we lock in. We’re nowhere near that.

Source: Great Salt Lake Strike Team, 2026 data report. City and business use is rising while farm use declines.

1. Pay, don’t mandate

Farms and ranches use about 65% of the water that would otherwise reach the lake. That makes them part of the solution, but not the villains. Many of these families have held their water rights for generations, their fields feed us and the birds, and they are often the quickest to cut back when asked. Taking their water by force would be wrong, and it would end up in court for years.

The better way is a fair market:

Pay farmers who choose to share water with the lake. Expand voluntary leasing, so a farmer can rest a field or stop irrigating late in the summer and get paid for the water that flows to the lake instead. They keep their rights and their land.
Make sure the water actually arrives. Saved water has to be tracked and protected all the way down the river, so it isn’t simply picked up by the next user downstream.
Help cities use less, too. Cities, homes, and businesses now account for more than a quarter of the water kept from the lake, and that share is rising. Most of it goes onto lawns. Help cities pay families to replace thirsty grass with water-wise yards, and reward new neighborhoods built with less of it.

2. Bring home the federal money

Utah can’t buy 800,000 acre-feet of water a year on its own. The president has asked Congress for $1 billion to help save the lake, and Utah’s delegation has already written the first $14.5 million into House spending bills. On this, I’d stand with the president and with Utah’s leaders of both parties.

I’d push to get the full $1 billion across the finish line, and I’d insist on two things:

Utah stays in charge. Federal money should back the state’s plan, not replace it with a plan written in Washington.
The money buys results. Water for the lake first, then dust control, removing invasive plants that soak up water, and the science to measure what’s working.

3. Protect our lungs from the dust

When the wind blows across the dry lakebed, it carries dust toward Davis, Weber, and Salt Lake counties. Researchers have found arsenic and other metals in that dust, and one study estimated the health costs of lake dust at $1 billion to $2 billion a year. Utah has just begun building the network of monitors needed to track it.

I’d make sure federal partners help finish the job: more monitors in the neighborhoods downwind, real health studies so families know what they’re breathing, and fast action to control the worst dust hot spots on the lakebed.

4. The lake’s industries do their part

A handful of companies pull minerals out of the lake’s water, from salt and fertilizer to magnesium. They make money from a public resource, and they use about 6% of the water kept from the lake. When the lake is in danger, they should share the sacrifice like everyone else.

Utah’s deal with its largest mineral company is the model: use your full water right when the lake is healthy, cut back when it’s low, and stop when it’s in crisis. Every company operating on the lake should make the same commitment, and they should pay fair royalties that go back into restoring it.

5. No new giant water users at the lake’s expense

The lake can’t afford new industries that quietly take more of the water flowing toward it. Any new large industrial user in the lake’s watershed, including the massive data centers now being proposed across Utah, should have to show, in public, that it won’t reduce the water reaching the Great Salt Lake.

6. A healthy lake by 2034

When the Winter Olympics come back to Salt Lake City in 2034, the world will be watching. State leaders, businesses, and nonprofits have set a goal of bringing the lake back toward a healthy level by then. If we do it, Utah would be the first place on earth to save a dying saline lake.

That’s a goal worth uniting behind, across parties. I’d make it one of my top priorities in Congress.

What I won’t do

Take water from farmers by force.
Let the lake turn into a dust bowl because the fix felt too expensive. Letting it die would cost far more.
Hand the lake over to Washington. Federal money, Utah’s plan.

The bottom line

The Great Salt Lake is Utah’s to save. We know what it takes: more water, delivered every year, from farms, cities, and industry alike, with fair pay for the people who give it up and real help from Washington. If we stay at it, our grandchildren will grow up with a living lake, clean air, and the best snow on earth.