Gov. Spencer Cox signs GSL 2034 to save Great Salt Lake
The Great Salt Lake has been at unhealthy water levels for over a decade now, with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration saying it reached a historic low of 4,188.5 feet in 2022.
The lake levels rose in 2023 and 2024 because of above-average snowpack, with the Utah Division of Water Resources saying the record snowpack in 2023 caused the lake to rise 5.5 feet. While this brought the lake closer to a healthy level, it did not provide a permanent solution.
Utah’s Grow the Flow, an initiative of Conserve Utah Valley dedicated to conserving land and water, said the lake has a cycle that helps create a good snowpack for Utah. The lake and Utah’s snowpack rely on each other. When one is lacking, it causes damage to the other, which can set the cycle into a negative spiral.
A report written by Scott Hotaling, assistant professor of watershed sciences at Utah State University, states the peak snowpack Utah sees every year has dropped by 16% since 1979, and it is expected to continue dropping in the future.
To combat the continual shrinking of the lake, Gov. Spencer Cox signed the GSL 2034 charter. This charter has pledged $200 million in private commitments to restore and protect the lake.
Cox said he doesn’t want to see the lake fail.
“Across the world, saline lakes are in decline. Utah will be the exception. The Great Salt Lake is our lake, our heritage, and our responsibility,” Cox wrote about the charter.
The goal the charter is setting is to reach healthy levels by 2034. In an article published on the Governor of Utah official website, it was stated the charter’s goal year for healthier levels falls on the same year Utah will once again host the Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games. To meet this goal, it would require reaching 4,198 feet of elevation for the lake in 9 years, which is about a 6.4 feet difference.
The charter also mentions the work that has been done already to help the lake.
“In the past three years, crews removed thousands of acres of water-hungry invasive plants, producers launched hundreds of agricultural optimization projects, thousands of secondary water meters were installed to help communities track and conserve, voluntary water leasing expanded, and lawmakers passed targeted legislation,” the charter states
The charter said the result from all of this work was more than 288,000 acre-feet of water now dedicated to the lake that wasn’t there three years ago.
Janice Brahney, associate professor of environmental biology chemistry at USU, said it is important to keep the lake at a healthy level to keep the sediments on the playa, which is the flat dry lakebed surrounding the Great Salt Lake, and out of the air.
“Dust has a lot of negative health outcomes, not just because of the potential composition of the dust, but dust in general is unhealthy for people,” Brahney said. “It’s especially unhealthy when it gets into the small grain sizes.”
Brahney also said the unhealthy lake levels could cause negative economic impacts for Utah as well.
“If the lake becomes too saline, then the organisms that live in the lake, like brine shrimp, can’t survive, and the brine shrimp population is part of the economy in Utah,” Brahney said.