The 4,200 Project: The Solution to the Great Salt Lake Crisis
For decades, the Great Salt Lake has been disappearing before our eyes. Utah's unremittent upstream diversions, water policy failures, and state-sponsored propaganda have made the lake's eventual collapse all but certain. While state leaders pontificate and congratulate themselves for minuscule water deliveries and programs with questionable merit, the lake continues to see year-over-year declines and head towards a new record low water level.
Every foot of water level decline at the Great Salt Lake is a threat to the 12 million migratory birds that visit the lake each year, the $1.3 billion lake economy, and the health of every Wasatch Front resident. This is all well-known and broadly understood, and yet the state does next to nothing to prevent this crisis.
To make up for the state's dereliction of duty and save the Great Salt Lake, Utah Rivers Council, the Great Salt Lake Waterkeeper, developed the 4,200 Project. This holistic, science-based initiative takes a realistic look at the Great Salt Lake to determine what restoring the lake would require and then compares these findings to Utah's water policy to highlight its dysfunctions and failings.
Finally, the project outlines ambitious but realistic policy solutions that could avert the ecological disaster unfolding on Utah's watch. Our policies are bold, but entirely attainable if we have the dedication and moral fiber to implement them.
Here are a few of the policies outlined within the project's guidebook:
- Establish a lake level goal of 4,200 feet above sea level, the widely recognized healthy water level for the Great Salt Lake.
- Give the Great Salt Lake permanent legal protection by amending Utah's instream flow law.
- Fix Utah's agricultural water optimization program to ensure that water saved through the taxpayer-funded optimization program gets sent to the lake.
- Change Utah's property tax system to embrace free market economics and stop incentivizing water waste with artificially deflated water prices.
We developed and publicized all of these policies (and several others) over a year ago, but we need your help to get state leaders to actually consider and implement them. Use the link below to read the 4,200 Project Guidebook, get familiar with our policy solutions, and sign the pledge.
Together, we can save the Great Salt Lake.
