April 07, 2023

3 actions to save Great Salt Lake

 Lynn de Freitas, executive director of FRIENDS of the Great Salt Lake. Lynn de Freitas, executive director of FRIENDS of the Great Salt Lake.

This piece was written by Heather May and published in the Great Salt Lake Collaborative's newsletter, Lake Effect, on April 7, 2023. Subscribe to the newsletter here.

Lake to-do list 

Lynn de Freitas has been advocating for the Great Salt Lake for almost three decades. So it’s no wonder the executive director of FRIENDS of Great Salt Lake is called the lake’s “superhero.”

Keep reading to find out her top solutions for the lake, as told to the Wallace Stegner Center Symposium on The Future of the Great Salt Lake.

1. Rethink how lake water is used. 

State leaders say they’ve done more than ever before when it comes to water legislation and protecting the Great Salt Lake, allocating about $1 billion in the past two legislative sessions.

The state shouldn’t spend all that money to get water into the lake to fill up the ponds of mineral companies, de Freitas says.

Mineral extraction by Cargill, Compass Minerals, Morton and U.S. Magnesium used about 182,000 acre feet of water in 2020, according to the Great Salt Lake Strike Team. 

But those companies have rights to more water — up to 600,000 acre feet, according to FRIENDS. (By comparison, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints donated 20,000 acre feet to the lake. And the lake needs an additional 1 million acre feet of water each year to reverse its decline.)

Companies are seeking to extend their canals to get more water

de Freitas says the state has the power and obligation to challenge those companies’ water rights under the public trust doctrine. Lawmakers passed HB513 to curtail those companies’ water use when salinity levels get too high in Gilbert Bay. But that’s only for future mineral leases, she says. She wants it to apply to existing leases, too.

The ecosystem, she says “should be given a higher priority than mineral extraction.”

2. Set a target elevation range. 

matrix (what she calls the lake’s Rosetta Stone) shows the ideal range is 4,198 to 4,205 feet. Islands are islands again, she says. Boats get out of the marina, and salinity levels sustain the lake’s ecosystem.

Today, the lake sits at 4,191.5 feet. (It's risen 3 feet since it's historic low, according to this FOX 13 News story.)

Gov. Spencer Cox derided a failed resolution to set a target at 4,198 feet as useless, revealing that he looks at the lake levels everyday and is shooting to raise its level to its average without the resolution. 

(Another speaker said the resolution was opposed because some feared that if the goal wasn’t met, the government would “start shutting people’s taps off.”)

de Freitas agrees the state doesn’t need legislation. But she says the state needs a target range to determine the timeframe to get there and the tools to use. 

The newly created Great Salt Lake Commissioner must set that target, she says. 

3. Kill the Bear River Development project. 

The proposed system of pipelines, dams and reservoirs to provide additional water to the Wasatch Front would divert 220,000 acre-feet of water from the Bear River — the main lifeline of the lake. 

Authorized by the Legislature in 1991, the project was proposed by an agency of the Utah Department of Natural Resources, which is also in charge of protecting the lake.

“All of our conservation efforts, all the incentives we’re providing… if Bear River is developed, all of that is really for naught,” de Freitas says. “We should put it to rest.

”House Speaker Brad Wilson seems to agree: at a Great Salt Lake Collaborative forum last year he said the lake needs to be saved first. You can watch that forum with Wilson and de Freitas here. 

But a bill that would have taken money from a fund for Bear River Development to purchase water for the lake was never heard in the last legislative session. 

This piece was written by Heather May and published in the Great Salt Lake Collaborative's newsletter, Lake Effect on April 7, 2023. Subscribe to the newsletter here.