Utah Legislative Committee Advances Bill to Dry Up the Great Salt Lake
A Utah Legislative Committee advanced a new bill on Friday that will act to dry up the Great Salt Lake under the false notion that the bill will help the lake. Having passed committee, the bill now goes to the House Floor and will be voted on in the next week. Please take a moment to help us stop the disappearance of the Great Salt Lake, which is forcing people and businesses to think about leaving Northern Utah.
You can help us stop the Utah Legislature from drying up the Great Salt Lake by contacting your representative in the House and TELLING THEM TO VOTE NO ON HB 60.
HB 60 was passed by the erroneous and disingenuous claim that the bill will help the Great Salt Lake. This is the opposite of what this legislation will do, since the bill removes existing language from Utah law requiring Utah’s chief water right officer – the State Engineer – from having to consider the needs of the environment, the needs of fish and wildlife, air quality, community wellbeing or even economic impacts from unnecessary water projects like proposed Bear River Development.
This repeated pattern of pretending that harmful proposed legislation will help the Great Salt Lake has been a frequent strategy at the Utah Legislature by water lobbyists working behind the scenes over the last few years.
HB 60 removes existing Utah law designed to ensure protection for water bodies and aquatic ecosystems like the Great Salt Lake. It limits who can protest a new water diversion or new use of water upstream by forcing members of the public to prove they will suffer “particularized injury.” This standard requires the demonstration of personal harm that directly and individually affects a person, not harm that is shared by whole communities, like toxic dust from the Great Salt Lake.
HB 60 directs that the state engineer “may not consider or rely on detriment to the public welfare as a basis for the rejection of an application” if the potential harm is based on “the volume of water on or flow of water across sovereign land.” The Great Salt Lake is on sovereign lands, as is Bear Lake, Utah Lake, portions of the Bear River, portions of the Colorado River, portions of the Green River and the Jordan River. This means that this bill will harm rivers and lakes across the entire state of Utah.