The Utah Legislature’s New Bill Will Dry Up the Great Salt Lake’s North Arm
The Utah Legislature is about to hold a special legislative session and consider a bill which will precipitate the disappearance of the Great Salt Lake’s North Arm, which represents 40% of the lake’s surface area. The Great Salt Lake Amendments bill passed the August Natural Resources & Agriculture Committee amidst a fair amount of misinformation on the proposed legislation. Understanding what the bill does and doesn’t do requires learning how Utah is currently managing salinity and water levels at the lake.
The Great Salt Lake is divided into two sections — the North Arm and the South Arm — by a railroad causeway constructed in the 1950s. This causeway is a barrier to water flows between the two arms in all but one place, a narrow gap known as the causeway breach. Since the rivers that feed the Great Salt Lake all enter via the South Arm, all water entering the North Arm (excluding direct precipitation) comes from the South Arm via this breach. Over the decades, the North Arm grew saltier than the South Arm, and high salinity levels can be an impediment for birds, brine shrimp, and other components of the ecosystem.
When the Great Salt Lake hit its 2022 record low, salt levels in the South Arm increased to detrimental levels, so Utah began managing salinity through the breach using an adjustable berm to reduce water flows from the South Arm into the North Arm. This was done through legislation which is now law that requires that if water flows to the North Arm are cut off, they must be restored within 18 months. This requirement keeps North Arm flows from ever being permanently restricted.
The proposed bill that will be voted upon in a few weeks removes this requirement to restore flows to the North Arm. The bill still requires the Utah Division of Forestry, Fire, and State Lands to prepare a plan with the objective of returning flows to the North Arm, but it eliminates the requirement to comply with this plan.
One might argue that Utah is making progress in providing water to the Great Salt Lake, so why should we worry about abolishing this requirement to restore flows to the North Arm?
The Great Salt Lake needs an additional inflow of water totaling 800,000 – 1,000,000 acre-feet every year for the next 20 years to reach a healthy level of 4,198 feet above sea level by the year 2045. But Utah is delivering less than 100,000 acre-feet of additional water to the lake each year while upstream water diversions continue and climate change is shrinking our snowpacks. If we allow Utah to stop flows from entering the North Arm and remove the requirement to restore those flows while also failing to greatly increase water deliveries to the lake, how can we expect Utah to deliver on its promise not to dry up the lake’s North Arm?
The state is moving forward with the next phase of its long-telegraphed plan to permanently dry up the North Arm. They are also working to decide where to construct dikes in the lake to continue shrinking it down thereafter, once again through new legislation passed since the 2022 record low water year. These represent disastrous changes for the lake’s ecology, specifically the 12 million migratory birds that visit the lake each year, as well as the health of every Wasatch Front resident.
That’s why we’ve been working with legislators to try and get the requirement restored, but we need your help. Before the legislature goes into special session, please call your legislators and ask that the Great Salt Lake Amendments bill be revised to maintain the requirement that the division comply with its own plan to restore flows to the North Arm (the requirement in line 90, shown above).