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New York Times
05-05-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
The Great Salt Lake Is Drying. Can Utah Save It?
Three years ago, when Utah's Great Salt Lake was at its lowest levels, state lawmakers were alarmed enough to try what may be impossible: save the lake from drying up. If Utah succeeds, it would be the first place in the world to reverse a saline lake's decline. The salt lake — the largest in the Western Hemisphere — once covered an area larger than Rhode Island. Today, more than half its water is gone. About 800 square miles of lake bed sits exposed, baking in the desert heat, sometimes billowing toxic dust plumes across the state's urban core. 'Fast crises often get more attention than slow crises,' said Brian Steed, the state's newly appointed Great Salt Lake commissioner, tasked with developing a strategic plan for the lake. 'And in this case, it's been a slow crisis until 2022, when we realized how dire the situation was.' That year, Joel Ferry, then a lawmaker in the Utah House of Representatives, called for emergency action, saying the depleted lake was an 'environmental nuclear bomb.' A flurry of bills overhauled water laws dating to the pioneer era. But the measures the state is pursuing will take decades to reap results, if ever. Critics now say the pace and scale of the efforts must greatly increase. What is at stake, they warn, is a public health disaster, the collapse of an ecosystem that supports millions of migrating birds, and a devastating blow to the state's tourism, skiing, mining and real estate industries. The effects would reach far beyond Utah. Minerals from the lake are used in America's beverage cans and in fertilizer for much of the world's organic fruits and nuts. The lake's brine shrimp eggs support a global seafood industry. Dust laden with arsenic and other heavy metals could blow across other states. And as climate change intensifies drought across the West, it would also bring accelerated evaporation of the lake. 'They've stated they've done enough,' Deeda Seed, a campaigner with the Center for Biological Diversity, a nonprofit group suing the state, said of lawmakers. 'It's not working.' Utah has a conservative Republican governor and supermajority in the statehouse, and most legislators bristle at regulation. They have been reluctant to constrain the industries that use the most water. Real estate development is a priority in Utah, one of the five fastest-growing states in the U.S. last year. Agriculture, and one of its primary cash crops, alfalfa, is the basis of much of Utah's rural economy. And the dairy and beef industries rely on alfalfa hay to feed cattle. Utah policymakers tout $1 billion invested in water conservation in 2022 and 2023. More than a quarter of that was provided by the federal government, mostly from pandemic-era aid. Separately, about $50 million in federal aid meant to restore wetlands and help fund a water-leasing program was paused by the Trump administration. The state recently learned that the money would be released, but it is unclear if there will be any future federal aid for the project. For now, the lake's 20-year decline has stabilized, although that has nothing to do with action by lawmakers. A recent year of record snow replenished mountain streams and reservoirs, allowing more water to flow to the Great Salt Lake. It currently is five feet higher than its all-time low, but it will need to rise another five to attain a minimum healthy elevation. To reach that level in five years, Mr. Steed's analysis and strategic plan show, all water users in the Great Salt Lake basin would need to cut their consumption by half. The shift would have enormous consequences for the state's economy. 'I just don't think we have political support for that,' Mr. Steed said, 'nor do I think we would have public support for that kind of drastic action.' He aims instead to reach the goal in 30 years. To do so, the region would need to free up about enough water to support the equivalent of at least a million households annually. Making real headway could require tens of millions of dollars every year. Gov. Spencer Cox requested $16 million this year for the state to buy water leases for the lake, but lawmakers approved only $1 million. The governor also sought $650,000 to monitor and begin mitigating the lake bed's dust. He got less than a quarter of that. 'The legislative and executive appetite to get water to the lake has absolutely evaporated,' said Ben Abbott, an ecology professor at Brigham Young University and the lead author of a 2023 report warning that the lake could disappear in as little as five years. For now, the industries most vital to protecting the lake are largely on the sidelines. Some farmers are benefiting from irrigation upgrades partly financed by the state. But only a handful have signed up to lease water that could feed the lake. 'I certainly don't want to see the lake dry up and disappear,' said Jason Westover, a farmer who has not joined the leasing effort. 'But I also don't want my industry that I've grown up with and love to be impacted just to prolong the inevitable.' For developers, it's mostly business as usual. Lawmakers earmarked $40 million in 2022 for a lake trust meant, in part, to help preserve its wetlands. At the same time, they created an Inland Port Authority that has offered state incentives for industrial developers to pave over wetlands in at least four crucial areas. Brad Wilson, Utah's Republican former House speaker, who spearheaded many of the policy changes benefiting the Great Salt Lake, is also a prominent real estate developer — a third of the Legislature has ties to the industry. Housing affordability and water supply will remain the state's top challenges in perpetuity, he said in an interview. 'We should continue to have a strategy to ensure we have enough water for our growth,' Mr. Wilson said, 'so our kids and grandkids can live here.' Refilling the Lake Water flows to the Great Salt Lake through three rivers that collect snow runoff and scour minerals from the Uinta and Wasatch Mountains. It leaves the lake through evaporation, but the minerals remain, making the lake saltier than the ocean. While climate change has contributed to extensive water shortages in the Southwest, the Great Salt Lake's decline is mostly human-caused. Agriculture uses 71 percent of the water that would otherwise flow to the lake, and cities use around 17 percent, according to research compiled by the Great Salt Lake Strike Team, a group of climate scientists, policy analysts and state regulators. Utah lawmakers put a system in place to incentivize water rights holders — especially farmers — to repair the watershed. They provided subsidies for more efficient irrigation equipment. The legislators also made it possible for the state, nonprofits or private entities to pay farmers for a temporary lease of the resulting surplus water. In theory, the transaction should be a win-win. The farmer has an incentive to use less water without taking a financial hit — potentially even making a bigger profit — while helping the lake recover. Lawmakers also funded watershed improvements. The National Audubon Society and the Nature Conservancy manage the trust — worth $40 million, most of that already spent — and last year secured 69,000 acre-feet of wetlands for the lake, enough water to support about 140,000 households per year. Nearly a third came from a donation by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which has a vast real estate portfolio. 'This is new,' said Marcelle Shoop, who is helping oversee the trust. 'We're all trying to figure out the best way to make these voluntary transactions work, both for the farmer and for the environmental purposes.' While the state grants for irrigation proved popular among farmers, so far, hardly any have agreed to lease their water rights. 'We're tired of getting a black eye,' said Trevor Nielson, general manager of the Bear River Canal Company, which holds the rights for about 2,000 farmers. 'Yeah, we use the most water, but we're also the ones who are literally changing how we do business.' Agriculture is challenging in Utah, an arid state with terrain that varies from hot deserts to cool mountain valleys. About 65 percent of its land is owned by federal agencies. Farmers have found alfalfa hay, and the cattle that feed on it, to be the most sustainable and profitable food products to produce. But alfalfa has become a scapegoat. Some urban residents have called on Utah lawmakers to buy out alfalfa farmers to 'let the water flow,' without scrutinizing their own beef and dairy consumption habits. Others have suggested encouraging farmers to transition to other crops, like wheat. But farmers are trying to compete in a national and international market, where their alfalfa fetches higher prices than grain. There's also a learning curve. For an individual farmer, it would be equivalent to asking a rocket manufacturer to start building cars, said Mr. Ferry, the former legislator and now the state's natural resources director, as well as a farmer himself. 'All those things make it really difficult to flip a switch,' he said. And while beef and dairy cattle, along with their feed, are the leading cause of water depletions in both the Great Salt Lake basin and the Colorado River, researchers say that alfalfa is one of the few crops that can help watersheds recover. It can go dormant for up to a year if farmers choose to lease their water, and it improves soil health, requiring few, if any, polluting chemicals. One holdup with water leasing is that Utah has yet to build a comprehensive system that can track leased water and ensure it makes it from the farm to the lake without being diverted by another user. But the state's biggest hurdle may be earning farmers' trust. To stay profitable, farmers now often must expand their footprint, renting land from neighbors. If the state can pay more to lease water than the farmer, it could take that property out of production, bankrupt the farmer and put tractor mechanics, seed wholesalers and irrigation pipe suppliers out of business. 'Our biggest fear is that long-term leasing of water shares may be the death of agriculture,' said Nathan Daugs, a farmer and the manager of the Cache Water District. Utah's farmers have long watched farmland that goes out of production get gobbled up by subdivisions, warehouses and strip malls with lawns. 'Developers will pay more for water than I can pay,' said Mitch Hancock, a farmer in Box Elder County. 'Everything We Can' Advocacy groups, including the Center for Biological Diversity, don't feel Utah is moving fast enough on saving the Great Salt Lake. Several filed a lawsuit in 2023, arguing the state has a responsibility to ensure the saline lake's survival. The same concept — called the public trust doctrine — was central to a successful lawsuit involving Mono Lake in California in the 1980s. The Los Angeles water department had bought and dried all the farmland around Owens Lake, in an arid valley east of the Sierra Nevada, and piped the water more than 200 miles south to support the growing city. The lake dried up, becoming the largest source of human-caused dust pollution in the nation. After Los Angeles began doing the same to Mono Lake, near Yosemite Park, California's Supreme Court ruled that the city had to curb its water diversions to protect it. But that suit, brought in a liberal state more open to regulation, involved a single diverter — the water department — not the tens of thousands of water rights holders, often banding together in canal companies, in the farmland and cities of the Great Salt Lake basin. And it has not resulted in Mono Lake, also saline, rising to the mandated level all these decades later. Mono and Owens are a small fraction of the Great Salt Lake's size. Utah's lawmakers know that story. 'We've done everything we can within the bounds of private property rights,' said Rep. Casey Snider, a Republican state lawmaker. 'Once you put people in the courtroom, you send people to their corners and they can't work together.' In March, a judge rejected the state's motion to dismiss the public trust lawsuit, and appeared to rebuke the state for implying it had the right to let the Great Salt Lake dry and fill it in if it so chose. But she also denied the plaintiffs' request that the state restrict upstream water rights until the lake refills. While industry-friendly, Utah's lawmakers have acted against some businesses considered harmful to the lake. They have blocked mineral companies from siphoning away more lake water to harvest lithium, which is in demand for electric vehicle batteries. Regulators have cracked down on US Magnesium — the country's only domestic source of the mineral — refusing to allow the company more access to the receding lake. They also denied an application to build a massive landfill on the shore that would have potentially accepted toxic coal ash from coal-fired power plants in other states. Even so, lawmakers continue to encourage development that takes a toll on the state's natural resources, including water. Among several major projects, they have spent more than $1 billion moving the state prison to the lake's southern shore in 2022. There, new roads, power lines and water pipes have since opened a vast swath of land to industrial growth. Lawmakers created a quasi-government body, the Inland Port Authority, that has pushed development there and in three other counties around the lake with sensitive wetlands — although Ben Hart, the executive director, said he was encouraging builders to embrace less water-intensive and ecologically damaging projects. Critics say that state funds earmarked to fuel development would be better spent helping the Great Salt Lake refill. 'I'd like to see us quit spending money to promote growth that's already happening faster than we can handle it,' said Rep. Doug Owens, a Democratic state lawmaker. He introduced a bill this session that would have limited grass in residential construction. A second called for more water-wise drip irrigation in new developments. The first bill never made it to committee. The second died on the House floor.
Yahoo
06-03-2025
- Automotive
- Yahoo
Salt Lake City says last-second tweak to Utah transportation study is ‘concerning'
The Utah House of Representatives passed an omnibus transportation bill late Tuesday, but with yet another adjustment to a portion about a Salt Lake City transportation study that the city finds 'concerning.' The House voted 60-14 to pass SB195 — now on its fifth version, which its sponsors had viewed as a compromise to concerns the city brought up about a one-year pause in implementing road safety projects. However, critics say a slight change in its language since it cleared a House committee last week could derail the compromise. The Utah Senate refused to concur with the substitute Wednesday evening, sending the issue to a conference committee to resolve. The fifth substitute had called on a "highway reduction strategy" to review "permanently reducing the number of motorized vehicle travel lanes" along with a handful of other strategies that "may increase congestion for motor vehicles" on arterial or collector roads. But the bill language was adjusted again before Tuesday's vote to switch the language back to "highway." Rep. Kay Christofferson, R-Lehi, the bill's floor sponsor, said it's meant to reflect state roads in the city. The Utah Department of Transportation manages some of the city's roads, including state highways and roads by freeways. He said the substitute would still allow the city to move forward with roadway safety projects that are "already planned and going." The study would evaluate any potential impacts that safety projects have on traffic, including impacts on the arterial and collector roads. "We took that language out — the moratorium — so we just said, 'We're going to evaluate future projects,'" he said. "I feel like — after talking to the city leaders — we came to a position where we're OK with that." However, Rep. Angela Romero, D-Salt Lake City, said the slight change to "highway" in the language could have wider impacts. "When we use the word highway, that includes all local and state roads," she said. "I just really have concerns with this language because I know the good sponsors have been working with Salt Lake City — and I don't know if Salt Lake City has had an opportunity to look at this amendment." The vote took place late Tuesday as Salt Lake City meetings had just ended. A spokesperson for the Salt Lake City Mayor's Office told Wednesday that the city views the latest version as "concerning" again, adding that the city is working with its legislative team and legislative leadership to address it. Rachel Otto, chief of staff for Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall, had thanked the bill's sponsors for the original language in the fifth substitute last week. "It's really crucial for Salt Lake City to enact traffic safety measures and make sure that we have a multimodal transportation system that functions safely for all users," she said at the time. "We also want to be sensitive to the growth that Salt Lake City is seeing and ensuring that we are really building a city that works for everyone." Salt Lake City recently approved a budget amendment that included funding more protected bike lanes at Capitol Hill, as well as bike and pedestrian crossing improvements along West Temple. The road safety advocacy group Sweet Streets called the version that passed Tuesday "its worst form yet," asserting that it "reneged on the compromises" made last week. The Utah Senate previously voted to approve a version of the bill that included a one-year moratorium on road safety projects in Salt Lake City, on Feb. 20. Sen. Wayne Harper, R-Taylorsville, the bill's sponsor, proposed the fifth substitute after meeting with the city over its concerns. All bills must clear the House and Senate by the end of Friday and then be signed by Gov. Spencer Cox in order to become law.
Yahoo
06-03-2025
- Automotive
- Yahoo
Salt Lake City says last-second tweak to Utah transportation study is ‘concerning'
The Utah House of Representatives passed an omnibus transportation bill late Tuesday, but with yet another adjustment to a portion about a Salt Lake City transportation study that the city finds 'concerning.' The House voted 60-14 to pass SB195 — now on its fifth version, which its sponsors had viewed as a compromise to concerns the city brought up about a one-year pause in implementing road safety projects. However, critics say a slight change in its language since it cleared a House committee last week could derail the compromise. The Utah Senate refused to concur with the substitute Wednesday evening, sending the issue to a conference committee to resolve. The fifth substitute had called on a "highway reduction strategy" to review "permanently reducing the number of motorized vehicle travel lanes" along with a handful of other strategies that "may increase congestion for motor vehicles" on arterial or collector roads. But the bill language was adjusted again before Tuesday's vote to switch the language back to "highway." Rep. Kay Christofferson, R-Lehi, the bill's floor sponsor, said it's meant to reflect state roads in the city. The Utah Department of Transportation manages some of the city's roads, including state highways and roads by freeways. He said the substitute would still allow the city to move forward with roadway safety projects that are "already planned and going." The study would evaluate any potential impacts that safety projects have on traffic, including impacts on the arterial and collector roads. "We took that language out — the moratorium — so we just said, 'We're going to evaluate future projects,'" he said. "I feel like — after talking to the city leaders — we came to a position where we're OK with that." However, Rep. Angela Romero, D-Salt Lake City, said the slight change to "highway" in the language could have wider impacts. "When we use the word highway, that includes all local and state roads," she said. "I just really have concerns with this language because I know the good sponsors have been working with Salt Lake City — and I don't know if Salt Lake City has had an opportunity to look at this amendment." The vote took place late Tuesday as Salt Lake City meetings had just ended. A spokesperson for the Salt Lake City Mayor's Office told Wednesday that the city views the latest version as "concerning" again, adding that the city is working with its legislative team and legislative leadership to address it. Rachel Otto, chief of staff for Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall, had thanked the bill's sponsors for the original language in the fifth substitute last week. "It's really crucial for Salt Lake City to enact traffic safety measures and make sure that we have a multimodal transportation system that functions safely for all users," she said at the time. "We also want to be sensitive to the growth that Salt Lake City is seeing and ensuring that we are really building a city that works for everyone." Salt Lake City recently approved a budget amendment that included funding more protected bike lanes at Capitol Hill, as well as bike and pedestrian crossing improvements along West Temple. The road safety advocacy group Sweet Streets called the version that passed Tuesday "its worst form yet," asserting that it "reneged on the compromises" made last week. The Utah Senate previously voted to approve a version of the bill that included a one-year moratorium on road safety projects in Salt Lake City, on Feb. 20. Sen. Wayne Harper, R-Taylorsville, the bill's sponsor, proposed the fifth substitute after meeting with the city over its concerns. All bills must clear the House and Senate by the end of Friday and then be signed by Gov. Spencer Cox in order to become law.
Yahoo
22-02-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
House passes bill preventing abortion providers from teaching in public schools
SALT LAKE CITY (ABC4) — The Utah House of Representatives has passed a bill that would prevent abortion providers from giving health-related instruction in public schools. H.B. 233 — or School Curriculum Amendments — decisively passed in a 51-14-10 vote Friday afternoon. If it advances on through the Senate, and is signed by the governor, the bill will prevent any 'entity employee, representative, or affiliate that performs elective abortions or provides de-branded maturation curriculum' from delivering health-related teaching. The bill would also prevent local school districts from allowing those organizations to provide materials on health topics in schools that receive state funding. For violators, the bill would impose a monetary penalty and withhold funds from the local district. Cox appoints former Moab police chief as head of Utah Dept. of Corrections Rep. Nicholeen Peck (R-Tooele) told lawmakers during floor debate that she felt there was a conflict of interest by allowing these entities to teach these subjects to students. 'I realized this could probably be a conflict of interest,' Peck told lawmakers. 'In our state law, it does say that we don't advocate for abortion, and even if these elective abortion providers … are not advocating by saying the word abortion, they are standing in front [of students] in a position of trust, and that's a conflict of interest.' During debate, Rep. Andrew Stoddard (D-Salt Lake) attempted to amend the bill to allow for a process to approve certain organizations to teach. This measure ultimately failed during a floor vote. Several representatives rose in opposition of the bill, some arguing that the law was unnecessary because educators are already required to follow the state-approved curriculum. Rep. Carol Moss (D-Salt Lake) said, 'These are volunteers, they don't have an agenda, they do it free, they don't pay them … and they're not teaching an agenda. I want to be perfectly clear to everybody, that anyone who does this has to follow the state-approved curriculum.' When debate closed on the bill, Peck made a final appeal to lawmakers on why her legislation was needed. 'We put our children … in a position of trust with all of the people who are going to teach them,' Peck began. 'Really what this bill is all about is making sure that when our children are trusting the people that we are putting them in front of to get their education, that they are not going to be taught to trust a certain brand or a certain type of organization that they would ultimately one day be led to give money to. We shouldn't be marketing to our children at school.' After its passage, Utah's House Democrats released a statement opposing the bill, saying, 'We believe in local control and trust the Utah State Board of Education to make informed decisions that prioritize students' well-being. Utahns do not need the legislature interfering with their family's educational choices.' H.B. 233 will need to go through the Senate Committee and a floor vote before it can go to the governor for approval or veto. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
07-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Utah readies itself to expand nuclear energy generation
The Utah House of Representatives unanimously passed a bill that sets up the Utah Energy Council, establishes energy development zones and creates a nuclear energy consortium as the state eyes a more secure, carbon free future. HB249 by Rep. Carl Albrecht, R-Richfield, has a lot of moving parts and he conceded it will be tweaked in the coming years, long after he is gone. He told his House colleagues he is fine with that. 'Politicians are like dirty diapers, every once in awhile they need to be changed.' The state Legislature is flush with energy bills, with leadership identifying energy as a top priority and one of the most pressing issues in Utah. The bill does not mean advanced nuclear technology will pop up immediately in the state, but the consortium is tasked with making decisions based on science and what is most appropriate in the state. Albrecht said the bill grew out of tours taken by an energy working group made up of both state senators and representatives. They visited the Idaho National Laboratory in Idaho Falls and toured the White Mesa Mill in Blanding. 'This started out as a bill structured for the future of nuclear energy in the state, and ended up as a bill to set up a structure for all energy in the future of the state: gas plants, geothermal, battery storage, wind, solar transmission projects, and as you well know, energy production and reliability is a statewide issue.' Albrecht explained other aspects of the bill. 'This bill creates zones, energy development zones, establishing a process for counties and municipalities to apply for an electric development zone designation. These zones are identified for their suitability in hosting future energy infrastructure and their proximity to transmission lines. The zones could come to the council from counties and municipalities,' he said. 'To keep the energy projects from pitting one county against the other, as we've seen with some retail incentives, public incentives are not allowed unless the project is inside of a zone.' House Speaker Mike Schultz, R-Hooper, spoke favorably about the bill on Thursday during media availability. 'Nuclear is so much safer now. We are running into energy crisis in our nation. It's seen as most efficient and clean for our future,' he said. 'If we're not going to go to nuclear, what are we going to go to?' He added: 'We have more requests for data centers in Utah than energy we use as a state. Whoever controls AI controls the world. We need more energy. We have an energy shortage. I'm glad the rest of the nation has come on board where Utah has been.' Utah has been identified as a 'first mover' state — only one of a handful — by the Idaho National Laboratory's Frontier Project. That designation means Utah is positioned well to embrace nuclear, not only from a carbon free standpoint but as a way to stimulate economic development. Utah is not alone in its quest to plug nuclear energy into the grid. This week, the Texas A&M University System announced it had offered land near the campus to four nuclear companies for the development of small modular reactors. Until now, reactor manufacturers — along with the most powerful names in big tech — have not been able to find a suitable place to build clusters of nuclear reactors that can supply the power needed for artificial intelligence endeavors, data centers and other projects. 'Plain and simple: the United States needs more power,' said Chancellor John Sharp. 'And nowhere in the country, other than Texas, is anyone willing to step up and build the power plants we need. Thanks to the leadership of Gov. Greg Abbott and others in Texas state government, Texas A&M System stands ready to step up and do what is necessary for the country to thrive.' Chief executive officers from four nuclear companies — Kairos Power, Natura Resources, Terrestrial Energy and Aalo Atomics — all have agreed to work to bring reactors to Texas A&M-RELLIS, a 2,400-acre technology and innovation campus in Bryan, Texas, as part of a project dubbed 'The Energy Proving Ground.' At the site, the companies will work toward bringing commercial-ready technologies to the land and using the project to test the latest prototypes. The first reactors could be constructed within five years. Once it is completed, power generated at the proving ground could supply power to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT, as it is more commonly called. Utah was on the cusp of bringing a small modular reactor to life to serve independent power systems run by municipalities. Named the Carbon Free Power Project, the reactors would have been manufactured off-site and then trucked to the Idaho National Laboratory. The project pushed by the Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems went through a laborious permitting process through the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. It was the first small modular reactor in the country to receive a stamp of approval on its design. But the delays and the escalating costs associated with the energy production eventually led to shelving the project, but UAMPS officials have said it is not totally off the table if costs come down. Congress is in the midst of tackling the permitting process and passed the ADVANCE Act to streamline the licensing process by the NRC. Top tech companies are attempting to solve the problem on their own by inking contracts with nuclear energy companies to provide the energy they need. They include Google and Amazon.
