The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation announced the largest ever federal investment in the Great Salt Lake last December. However, the federal government has now paused the distribution of this money.
The legislation granting this Great Salt Lake investment was part of former President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, which passed along party lines in 2022 and included several billion dollars to go toward various reforms, program expansions and subsidies.
The grant awarded Utah $50 million to be split two ways to benefit the lake. Most was for ecosystem restoration along the lakeshore, helping agencies like the Utah Division of Water Resources, the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, or the Utah Division of Forestry, Fire and State Lands mitigate invasive species and improve the wetlands and waterfowl management areas. The rest would be used to secure seasonal water rights leases from farmers, businesses, and other water rights holders in the Great Salt Lake Basin to ensure enough water could flow to the lake to maintain healthy levels.
“We’re still working with our partners in the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and trying to figure things out from a federal level on what goes, what stops,” said Brian Steed, the state’s Great Salt Lake commissioner. “Right now, as they figure that out, we’re on a temporary pause.”
Steed further explained that he believes Utah will receive this funding eventually and sees the current pause as just a temporary hang-up.
“This, too, shall pass, and we’ll get the money out the door as soon as we can,” he said.
House Speaker Mike Schultz, R-Hooper, said the state will continue to make its case for why it needs the $50 million.
“I think they paused pretty much everything. So it wasn’t just specific to that,” he said. “I think that’s fair, right? … The new administration comes in, and pushes pause on it.”
However, while the Trump administration has cut budgets for many federal programs and agencies and undertaken widespread layoffs of federal workers, it is not clear whether or not this pause in the $50 million Great Salt Lake Grant is a part of a larger federal directive.
Author: Emily Walters
Photo courtesy of Pascal Bernandon
Editor: Chevy Blackburn
outdoors@suunews.net