Your Efforts Helped Save the North Arm of the Great Salt Lake!
Under pressure from the public, the Utah Legislature fixed a bill that would have allowed Utah to dry up the North Arm of the Great Salt Lake, which represents 40% of the lake’s surface area. Passed by a legislative committee in August with only one vote of opposition, the bill was slated to allow Utah to shrink the Great Salt Lake in the face of state failure to deliver enough water to ensure its survival.
The bill was marketed as an effort to save the Great Salt Lake, but advocates for the bill refused to publicly acknowledge one line of the bill which had proposed to remove Utah’s existing compliance to restore flows to the North Arm of the lake after flows are shut off to attempt to control saliinity.
The North Arm of the Great Salt Lake receives all of its water flows through a breach in the railroad causeway that divides the lake’s North and South Arms. All of the lake’s rivers enter the South Arm, making the North Arm’s existence entirely dependent upon water flowing through this breach. Over the last few years, Utah has begun closing this breach to keep South Arm salinity from spiking, thereby maintaining aspects of the South Arm ecosystem and related economic activity. Utah law has required that if the breach is closed, water flows must be restored within 18 months. Losing the North Arm would be a calamity for the lake’s ecology, the 12 million migratory birds who rely on the lake each year, and the health of every Wasatch Front resident.
The proposed legislation would have abandoned this requirement to restore flows to the North Arm. Yet bill sponsors and advocates of the legislation refused to admit to this deleterious change and instead marketed existing Utah law as being part of the proposed legislation. Sponsors of this bill never admitted to the bill's legal implications, and instead attempted to avoid a public debate over drying up the North Arm.
But our efforts got the bill modified at the eleventh hour, protecting the North Arm. In a last-minute change, the requirement to reopen the causeway breach within 18 months of being closed was reinstated. This is a reminder that grassroots advocacy works and that when the people speak the Utah Legislature can listen. It’s also a reminder of how far we have to go.
Unfortunately, all the state’s current measures are delivering less than 100,000 acre-feet of additional water to the Great Salt Lake each year. The lake needs over 770,000 acre-feet of water each year to recover in 30 years, so the fight to save the Great Salt Lake is far from over. Let this victory be a rallying cry and a fresh source of hope as we continue fighting to save the Great Salt Lake.