Land & Environment

Strike Team: Utah Making Progress on Great Salt Lake

Conserving, dedicating, and delivering water to the lake must be a multi-year focus, experts say.

Low water levels at Great Salt Lake continue to threaten Utah’s economic, ecological, and human health. On Tuesday, the Great Salt Lake Strike Team — a collaboration of technical experts from Utah’s research universities and state agencies — released its 2025 data and insights summary.

This authoritative analysis makes clear four critical points:

  • Benefits of the lake: Utah receives numerous economic, ecological and human health benefits from the lake. The costs of inaction to the economy, human health and ecological conditions remain significant.
  • Making progress: Utah continues to make meaningful progress, including water conservation, infrastructure investment (including measurement and monitoring), statutory and regulatory reforms, berm management and other areas. The state’s multi-year, data-driven strategy to conserve, dedicate and deliver water to the lake is on track.
  • Long-term endeavor: Stabilizing and raising lake levels, managing salinity, and protecting economic, human and species health will require many years of stewardship leading up to the 2034 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games and beyond. Success requires everyone in the Great Salt Lake Basin to participate in yearly conserving, dedicating and delivering water to the lake.
  • Utah’s plan: Later this month, the Office of the Great Salt Lake Commissioner’s Office will release the 2034 Plan for a Healthy Great Salt Lake. The plan builds upon the Great Salt Lake Strategic Plan, released in January 2024, by identifying actions needed over the next 10 years to preserve the benefits Great Salt Lake provides to Utah and the world. Data developed by the Strike Team informs this plan.

“All indications demonstrate that delivering more water to the lake is a far more cost-effective solution than managing the impacts of a lake at a perpetually low level,” said Brian Steed, co-chair of the Great Salt Lake Strike Team and Great Salt Lake Commissioner. “We can invest time and financial resources now or pay much later. Fortunately, we have great data and a balanced and workable plan to succeed.”

Utah’s research universities — Utah State University and the University of Utah — formed the Great Salt Lake Strike Team to provide a primary point of contact for policymakers as they address the economic, health and ecological challenges created by the low elevation levels of the lake.

Together with state agency professionals, the strike team brings together experts in public policy, hydrology, water management, climatology, dust and economics to provide impartial, data-informed and solution-oriented support for the Commissioner’s Office and other Utah decision-makers. The Strike Team does not advocate but instead functions in a technical, policy-advisory role as a service to the state.

“Low lake elevations created by rising temperatures and human water depletions continue to put at risk the benefits created by the lake,” said William Anderegg, Strike Team co-chair and director of the Wilkes Center for Climate Science and Policy at the University of Utah. “Our review of the data confirms that with steady and deliberate actions, we can first stabilize and then raise lake elevation to levels that protect the benefits provided by the lake.”

The strike team’s report includes reporting on lake elevation, reservoir storage, salinity, streamflow, human water use, water rights and change applications, and mineral extraction. Importantly, the report identifies over 30 major milestones from 2024, including but not limited to the following:

  • Lake elevation: Increased inflows during 2024 were spread across both arms of the lake, resulting in a stable elevation for the south arm and larger gains for the north arm (2.8-foot rise). The lake remains well below the healthy range.
  • Ecosystem recovery/bring shrimp: Brine shrimp populations increased, with egg numbers up 50% from last year.
  • Invasive species: The state removed 15,600 acres of water-intensive phragmites, plus many more by other entities.
  • Funding: The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation directed $50 million toward Great Salt Lake preservation projects. Utah awarded $5.4 million to support 6,000 acres of Great Salt Lake wetlands and allocated $22 million for Great Salt Lake water infrastructure projects and $15 million to the Great Salt Lake Commissioner’s Office for planning and water leasing.
  • Water donations and releases: Jordan Valley Water Conservancy, Welby Jacob Water Users, and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints released approximately 10,000 acre-feet from Utah Lake to the Great Salt Lake via the Jordan River. Compass Minerals agreed to forgo 200,000 acre- feet of future water use, and Morton Salt agreed to forgo 54,000 acre-feet of future water. Both companies also agreed to cease all usage if the lake drops to 2022 levels. Water conservancy districts released stored water during the winter, including approximately 700,000 acre-feet of water that was released through the Jordan and Weber River systems.

The strike team acknowledges and appreciates the support of Gov. Spencer Cox and his cabinet, Senate President Stuart Adams, Speaker Mike Schultz, the full Utah Legislature, Presidents Elizabeth Cantwell and Taylor Randall, and other colleagues and partners who support data-informed solutions for the lake.

The leaders of the strike team affirmed in their opening letter that “actions to ensure a healthy Great Salt Lake are both necessary and possible.”

The full report is now available online.

Strike Team Membership

Co-Chairs

William Anderegg

Director, Wilkes Center for Climate Science and Policy, University of Utah

Craig Buttars

Commissioner, Utah Department of Agriculture and Food

Joel Ferry

Executive Director, Utah Department of Natural Resources

Natalie Gochnour

Director, Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute, University of Utah

Kim Shelley

Executive Director, Utah Department of Environmental Quality

Brian Steed

Great Salt Lake Commissioner

Executive Director, Janet Quinney Lawson Institute for Land, Water, and Air, Utah State University

David Tarboton

Director, Utah Water Research Laboratory, Utah State University

Team Members

Leila Ahmadi

Water Resource Engineer, Utah Division of Water Resources

Eric Albers

Project Lead

Senior Natural Resources Policy Analyst, Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute, University of Utah

Blake Bingham

Deputy State Engineer, Utah Division of Water Rights

Paul Brooks

Professor, Geology & Geophysics, University of Utah

Tim Davis

Deputy Great Salt Lake Commissioner

Eric Dixon

Senior Engineer, Utah Division of Water Resources

Joanna Endter-Wada

Professor, Natural Resource Policy, Utah State University

Tage Flint

Executive Director, Utah Water Ways

Candice Hasenyager

Director, Utah Division of Water Resources

Timothy Hawkes

General Counsel, Great Salt Lake Brine Shrimp Cooperative

William Johnson

Professor, Geology & Geophysics, University of Utah

John Lin

Associate Director, Wilkes Center for Climate Science and Policy, University of Utah

John Mackey

Director, Division of Water Quality

Anna McEntire

Managing Director, Janet Quinney Lawson Institute for Land, Water and Air, Utah State University

Bethany Neilson

Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Utah State University

Sarah Null

Professor, Watershed Sciences, Utah State University

Kevin Perry

Professor, Atmospheric Sciences, University of Utah

Ben Stireman

Deputy Director, Minerals and Lands, Division of Forestry, Fire and State Lands, State of Utah

Courtenay Strong

Professor, Atmospheric Sciences, University of Utah

Laura Vernon

Great Salt Lake Basin Planner, Utah Division of Water Resources

Marisa Weinberg

Program Manager, Great Salt Lake Sentinel Landscape

Matt Yost

Associate Professor and Agroclimate Extension Specialist, Utah State University

CONTACT

Anna McEntire
Managing Director
Janet Quinney Lawson Institute for Land, Water, and Air
(435) 881-1323
anna.mcentire@usu.edu

Nick Thiriot
Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute
801-842-9150
nick.thiriot@utah.edu


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