FARMINGTON BAY, Utah — The Great Salt Lake is getting a massive infusion of cash in an effort to reverse its dramatic declines.
On Wednesday, Governor Spencer Cox announced a $200 million investment from business and philanthropic groups to specifically work to save the lake. He was joined by some of Utah's most wealthy and powerful people at an event at Farmington Bay.
"Together, we really are going to make the Great Salt Lake great again," he quipped.
The governor also set a deadline to restore the lake to a healthy level — the 2034 Olympic and Paralympic Games, when Utah will once again welcome the world. He urged Utahns to sign onto a charter acknowledging the problems facing the lake and vowing to make personal changes to help fix it.
"This will be one of the great environmental successes in the history of humankind and Utah is going to write that chapter," Gov. Cox said.
The money comes from a couple of sources: the conservation group Ducks Unlimited pledged $100 million of its own to the effort. Josh Romney, the president of The Romney Group, also collected $100 million in pledges from across the state.
"This problem, to be honest, is a multi-billion dollar problem," he said in an interview with FOX 13 News. "It’s going to take the state, the feds, the private community, philanthropic community, environmental community, everybody's got to come together on this."
The crisis for the Great Salt Lake could not be more urgent. The lake is poised to drop to a new historic low next year. Dust storms carrying harmful materials (arsenic is among the naturally occurring minerals in the lake bed) frequently blow into nearby communities. Given those factors, Romney said, there needs to be significant changes.
"I think every Utahn is going to have to play some role in this. We’re all going to feel some changes we’re going to have to make from farming to residential. We’re all going to have to find ways to conserve water," he said.
The money can do a lot to get resources for the lake. But it is unclear if it will get the Great Salt Lake the one thing it really needs — water.
"There will be additional projects that come out of this funding that will help us get more water to the lake," Gov. Cox told FOX 13 News.
Since the Great Salt Lake dropped to a record low in 2022, the Utah State Legislature has passed dozens of bills and spent more than $1 billion on water conservation measures statewide. Those include funding for agriculture producers to grow crops with less water and new ways to measure how much the average Utahn uses in an effort to prod everyone toward conservation.
House Speaker Mike Schultz, R-Hooper, insisted it was showing success.
"Over 288,000 acre-feet of water is now dedicated to the lake that wasn’t dedicated to the lake three years ago. It’s been a huge team effort from a lot of times, political foes," he said of the collective effort to save the lake.
In the group watching Wednesday's news conference was Dr. Ben Abbott, the head of Grow the Flow, an environmental group that hasn't been shy of its criticism of some state efforts to save the lake in the past.
"For me? I’m more filled with hope about this issue than I've been in a real long time," he told FOX 13 News.
Dr. Abbott said it means something to see some of Utah's most powerful people united around a problem. He also believes money can turn into water.
"The most exciting thing that I heard? Was the governor saying we’re going to get the lake to a healthy level by the Olympics," he said. "That is a huge, huge reach and exactly the kind of vision that we need."
This article is published through the Great Salt Lake Collaborative, a solutions journalism initiative that partners news, education and media organizations to help inform people about the plight of the Great Salt Lake—and what can be done to make a difference before it is too late. Read all of our stories at greatsaltlakenews.org.
