Loss of the lake would be an environmental disaster with health and economic effects far beyond Utah’s borders. The state is taking action, but critics say it’s not doing enough.
By Leia Larsen | The New York Times and The Salt Lake Tribune | May 5, 2025, 3:00 a.m. | Updated: 10:24 a.m.
Three years ago, when the Great Salt Lake was at its lowest levels, Utah lawmakers were alarmed enough to try what may be impossible: save the lake from drying up.
If the state succeeds, it would be the first place in the world to reverse a saline lake’s decline. The salt lake — the largest in the Western Hemisphere — once covered an area larger than Rhode Island. Today, more than half its water is gone. About 800 square miles of lake bed sits exposed, baking in the desert heat, sometimes billowing toxic dust plumes across Utah‘s urban core.
“Fast crises often get more attention than slow crises,” said Brian Steed, the state’s newly appointed Great Salt Lake commissioner, tasked with developing a strategic plan for the lake. “And in this case, it’s been a slow crisis until 2022, when we realized how dire the situation was.”
That year, Joel Ferry, then a lawmaker in the Utah House, called for emergency action, saying the depleted lake was an “environmental nuclear bomb.” A flurry of bills overhauled water laws dating to the pioneer era.
But the measures the state is pursuing will take decades to reap results, if ever. Critics now say the pace and scale of the efforts must greatly increase. What is at stake, they warn, is a public health disaster, the collapse of an ecosystem that supports millions of migrating birds, and a devastating blow to the state’s tourism, skiing, mining and real estate industries.