Holding Utah’s Leaders Accountable for the Crisis They Created at the Great Salt Lake

In September 2023, the Utah Rivers Council joined a coalition of conservation and community groups in a seminal lawsuit challenging the state of Utah’s failure to comply with its mandatory duty to protect the Great Salt Lake—a public resource held in trust by the State.

The scientific consensus shows that the current crisis affecting the Great Salt Lake is primarily the result of upstream water diversions taking an unsustainable amount of water out of the Lake’s main tributaries. Under the public trust doctrine, the State has an obligation to review and, where necessary, modify those upstream diversions to protect the health of the Great Salt Lake. Yet the state agencies tasked with this obligation have failed to do so, at great cost to the Great Salt Lake, which has hit record low levels.

This failure is especially troubling because community leaders have raised alarms about the state’s inaction and urged officials to protect the lake. Over the last three decades, our organization and many others have proposed a myriad of new water policies, changes to water governance structures, and called for aquatic ecosystem protection for the Great Salt Lake. Stakeholders from across the political spectrum have proposed meaningful reforms to protect the Great Salt Lake, many of which have been implemented successfully in other states around the country.

Yet Utah officials have refused to take effective, substantive steps to protect the Great Salt Lake. Utah legislative leaders have consistently refused to even allow committee debate on these bills. Instead, they have imposed laws that dewater the tributaries of the Great Salt Lake for the benefit of special interest groups.

In the last two years, state leaders have passed a handful of water bills, but they fall far short of addressing the Lake crisis. In fact, as this Guidebook documents in subsequent pages, several of these policies open the door to greater harm to the Lake. Two decades into the ongoing Great Salt Lake crisis, the state of Utah still lacks a plan of action to restore the Great Salt Lake to its healthy minimum elevation.

Creating an official elevation goal for raising water levels at the Great Salt Lake is the first and most important step for us to ensure the Lake exists for future generations of people and wildlife.

We cannot ignore the scale of the crisis facing us. Decades of state-approved water diversions and policies designed to encourage water use have pushed the Great Salt Lake to the precipice of collapse. Raising the Great Salt Lake to 4,200 feet from its record low level of 4,188.5 feet would require getting roughly 8.5 million acre-feet of water into the Lake. For every year that the Lake remains below its healthy elevation, more harm accrues – more birds die, more Utahns breathe in toxic dust, and more economic activity is curtailed. We need to raise the Great Salt Lake back to its healthy elevation, and we need to do so as expeditiously as possible.

Given the recalcitrance of the State to act in the best interest of Utahns and the Great Salt Lake, we sought relief from Utah’s judicial system, as is our right under the public trust doctrine.

Our court case is based on the foundational principle that the state must protect, not destroy, the natural resources that it holds in trust for the people of Utah. History and precedent have established the public trust doctrine as a fundamental limit on sovereign authority. Indeed, the public trust is grounded in the Utah Constitution. Courts around the country have found that states have a mandatory duty to maintain important ecosystems for trust uses. Mono Lake in California is perhaps the most famous such example, although there are many others.

Our litigation is an essential step forward in compelling the state of Utah to provide real and meaningful protection for the Great Salt Lake. In addition, this Guidebook contains a package of legislative solutions that both Utahns and Americans at large who care about the Great Salt Lake can use to help lift the water levels of the Lake to a sustainable level. The policy measures proposed in this Guidebook represent a solid beginning for restoring the Great Salt Lake, but more must be done to address the Lake’s ongoing needs in an era of aridification, climate change, and growing water demands.

Both our litigation and the measures proposed in this Guidebook are essential ingredients in the recipe to save the Great Salt Lake. The immense challenge facing us collectively to sustain the Great Salt Lake for current and future generations will take everything we have. All three branches of government must be working towards a future where the Great Salt Lake is permanently restored. Such leadership requires courage on the part of government officials. Today we find ourselves in a situation where Utah’s leaders have not demonstrated the fortitude to stand up to special interests in our statehouse. We must rectify this problem through any lawful means available to us, and we are proud to be part of the coalition seeking a solution to save the Great Salt Lake.