AT THE WATER'S EDGE
The Great Salt Lake is dying. Can this $1B Trump plan save it?
Utah's Great salt lake has been shrinking for decades, but local officials, boosted by president Donald Trump, hope to refill it by 2034.
Docks at Utah's Great salt lake sit far away from the water's edge last September.
A bison walks on the dry bed of Utah's Great salt lake last September.
The Great salt lake is an important stopover for migratory birds.
SPOTLIGHT | UTAH
Winter's disastrously low snowfall could further complicate an already audacious plan to refill the dying Great Salt Lake in time for the 2034 Winter Olympics in Utah.
The plan being pushed by Utah officials and Olympics supporters received a major boost when President Donald Trump proposed $1 billion in federal assistance to acquire more water and address environmental concerns. The lake has been shrinking for decades as farmers divert melting snow and rain onto fields to grow crops, including alfalfa for cattle.
Boosters remain optimistic the coalition they've assembled can reverse the long-term declines in time for the lake to reflect the Olympic flame for the world.
"I am fully convinced we're going to fix this. This is a fixable problem," said Josh Romney, a Utah businessman and son of former Sen. Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican presidential candidate.
He said saving the lake may cost as much as $5 billion and require about 260 billion gallons of water, roughly the same amount used by residents and businesses in New York City over nine months.
What problems does the Great Salt Lake face?
The Great Salt Lake is the largest saline lake in the Northern Hemisphere and the world's eighth-largest, said Hannah Freeze, deputy commissioner of the Great Salt Lake. The commissioner's office coordinates lake improvement among the nonprofits, development community and governments.
"The lake is of hemispheric importance," Freeze said. "It's just a huge driver for our economy, our hydrology and the way we live here in Utah."
Water levels have always fluctuated in the Great Salt Lake, but in 2022 levels fell to their lowest in recorded history. While they rebounded slightly since then, ecologists, climate experts and the lake's supporters say longterm trends are grim because of increasing water use and climate change.
In addition to its iconic role in helping define Salt Lake City, the lake is a popular recreation destination and a crucial wildlife habitat for migrating birds. It's also home to a flourishing fishing industry in which workers scoop up vast quantities of microscopic brine shrimp sold internationally as fish food.
"The ecosystem is on life support. We're on the edge of ecological collapse, as well as economic and hydrological collapse with the lake, and that is because of local water overuse in Utah, Idaho and Wyoming," said Ben Abbott, a professor of ecology at Brigham Young University and executive director of Grow the Flow, a water policy nonprofit.
About 80% of the lake's decline is caused by water overuse; the remaining portion can be blamed on climate change and drought, Abbott said.
Abbott and other lake experts said this year's poor snowfall won't help their efforts.
Climate change is altering weather patterns across the West, warming temperatures, increasing evaporation and reducing snowpack.
Why is the Great Salt Lake drying up?
Though climate change contributes to the lake's depletion, Abbott and other experts said agricultural use is the single largest factor in drying up the lake. Another is population growth.
The suburbs around Salt Lake City are among the fastest-growing in the country, and Utah is growing much faster than the rest of the nation.
From 2024 to 2025, according to the Census Bureau, Utah's population grew by 1%, more than Arizona or Nevada, which makes it the fifth fastest-growing state that year. All those new residents — particularly the lush green lawns many grow in the desert-like climate — are consuming water that would ordinarily flow into the Great Salt Lake.
Farmers growing alfalfa for cattle and horses are the primary drivers of water use, however. And when it comes to persuading farmers to help recharge the lake, Romney said, it's important that everything be voluntary.
"It's not the same as encouraging people with big lawns to turn down their water," he said. "When you have that conversation with farmers, it's their livelihood, not just affecting the color of their lawn, but how much money they are able to bring home for their families."
The goal would be to provide opportunities for farmers to grow crops but in a way that reduces water use while realizing economic benefits, he said: "There are a lot of solutions out there that reduce water while maintaining crop yield."
He sees "massive" opportunities on the residential side, just by getting people to stop overwatering their lawns. Even if people just watered what the lawn needs and not what they think it needs, the region could achieve 200,000 acre-feet of water savings a year, he said, or about 65 billion gallons.
How does snowfall affect the lake?
Most of the West saw historically poor snowfall this winter, which has significant implications for residents and businesses that depend on the melting snow for irrigation each summer. Because the water that eventually ends up in the Great Salt Lake itself is too salty for drinking or irrigation, water managers won't draw it down the way they will with other lakes and reservoirs, such as Lake Powell in southern Utah.
The low snowfall in the valleys around the Great Salt Lake are symptoms of its chronically low water levels, Abbott said.
"Part of the reason why we had such a bad snow year this year is because the lake is so small that we don't have as much water vapor coming from the lake to support our snow," he said.
In 1986, when the lake was at a record high, it covered about 2,300 square miles, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. In 2022, it covered less than 1,000 square miles. Restoring the lake would increase the rain and snow, Abbott said.
Winter's low snow could have a short-term effect on how much water flows into the lake, but it's "so big that it can deal with one or even a number of drought years," Abbott said. "What it can't deal with is we've diverted that water year after year after year, over a century."
What environmental problems are connected to the Great Salt Lake?
Because the lake doesn't have an outlet, water flowing in eventually evaporates, leaving behind minerals, salt and other substances. Those deposits make the lake saltier when it holds less water and could create a toxic environment for birds or fish.
But salty is a perfect environment for brine shrimp — those tiny little creatures sold as Sea-Monkeys. Harvesting brine shrimp eggs for commercial fish food supports thousands of jobs and provides more than $1.5 billion a year in revenue. State officials say half of all farmed fish worldwide are raised on Utah-harvested brine shrimp eggs.
But the mineral deposits left behind when lake levels drop and the lakebed dries out and blows away in the wind contribute to air pollution in the region, along with persistent ozone problems. Last year, the Salt Lake City-Provo-Orem metro area ranked 25th worst in the nation for short-term particle pollution, according to the American Lung Association.
What are boosters trying to do?
Utah Gov. Spencer Cox announced a plan in fall 2025 to top up the lake ahead of the Winter Olympics.
"The Great Salt Lake is our lake, our heritage and our responsibility," he said at the time, announcing $200 million in private donations had already been pledged to help.
Romney said he's optimistic businesses and residents, along with the government, can work together to save the lake. One of the coalition's first big steps was to help the state buy the defunct U.S. Magnesium plant along the shore, keeping 3.26 billion gallons of water in the lake.
Though state officials won the bid, they needed Romney's Great Salt Lake Rising group to help cover half the immediate cost. Romney called the partnership "one of the largest environmental wins in the last two decades in the West."
Supporters are encouraged by a building sense of unity they see in Utah to address the lake's crisis. State legislators recently approved three bills to help the lake. Romney and Abbott said leaders of the state's predominant religion, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, took steps to promote the lake's restoration. The church adopted irrigation and landscaping measures that reduce water use at many of its Utah facilities.
How does Trump plan to save the lake?
Federal officials have not offered more specifics on how Trump's $1 billion plan would work, instead referring reporters to a four-sentence statement in the White House budget proposal that notes any restoration efforts would require a comprehensive federal approach. The funding also requires congressional approval.
The president on March 10 declared that only Trump can save the Great Salt Lake, which he said would be out of water "in a short period of time" unless he stepped in.
"Together, these investments would ensure the Great Salt Lake continues to support global aquaculture, serves as a domestic source of critical minerals, and drives economic activity in Utah and beyond," Trump's budget says.
Freeze, the deputy lake commissioner, called Trump's support "wildly significant."
Lynn de Freitas, executive director of FRIENDS of Great Salt Lake, said she's glad to see decades of work paying off. For more than 30 years, the nonprofit has worked to address the environmental conditions and consequences that have caused the lake's dramatic rise and fall.
Today, the lake depth averages about 33 feet, but it can spread out over a larger area with even a little rain, like batter poured into a cake pan, de Freitas said.
She's waiting to hear what specifics the president's plan will fund, from possible changes to the railroad causeway that essentially cuts the lake in half to measures limiting how much sediment flows in. She said that at this point, any and all help is welcome given the long-term forecasts.
"It's very good news to hear," she said. "I think there is a recognition that the West is going through some heavy times."
