In two years, the state approved about 2,500 acre-feet of new water rights within the Great Salt Lake basin under exceptions in a moratorium – including hundreds of acre-feet within view of the lake’s north arm.

While water use varies from home to home, the average Utah household uses around 0.5 acre-feet a year, according to the Utah Division of Water Rights, meaning those rights are the equivalent of about 5,000 new homes.

But, as Utahns reel from a housing crisis, most of those new water rights won’t be used to flush a toilet, take showers or do a load of laundry. Farming and ranching will account for more of the water used by the new rights holders.

In late 2022, Gov. Spencer Cox signed a proclamation closing the Great Salt Lake basin to new water rights appropriations as the lake was at its historic low. The proclamation came with some caveats.

Non-consumptive uses that return water to the system, like hydropower generation, can move forward. Applicants with plans to offset the water they deplete also have exceptions, as do applications for “small amounts” of water.

Utah state code defines “small amounts” as the water needed for a single residence, to irrigate a quarter-acre and to support 10 cows. That’s about 1.73 acre-feet a year – more than 563,000 gallons, though it can be more in some areas of the state.

In the two years following Cox’s proclamation, the Utah Division of Water Rights received about 300 applications for more than 230,000 acre-feet within the USGS boundaries of the Great Salt Lake Basin, based on data the state provided to The Salt Lake Tribune. That doesn’t include any applications the state has received since Oct. 29, 2024.

A Tribune analysis mapped those water rights, confirmed with the state that they fell within the USGS boundaries and found the division approved 2,517 acre-feet of new water rights within the basin.

Most of those rights are for irrigation and stock watering, including for a company associated with Utah House Speaker Mike Schultz. In a 2024 conflict of interest disclosure, Schultz listed Keller Cattle Corp. as an organization in which he is either an “owner or officer” and received at least $5,000 in income during the previous year.

Keller Cattle Corp. received 556.7 acre-feet of new water rights a year on about 160 acres near Promontory Hollow to provide water for growing hay and grazing cattle less than 10 miles from Spiral Jetty.

Schultz, R-Hooper, said Keller Cattle Corp. hasn’t yet drilled wells to feed small ponds on the 25,000-acre ranch he acquired a couple years ago, where several hundred cattle are grazing.

There are some existing wells they’ll probably first try as a water source, he said, but if they do drill, it’s likely to be at only one of the two locations where the company secured water rights — thus, not using the entire water right, he said.

Schultz added he went through the process “just like other landowners” and didn’t ask for as much as some others have. At least two other applicants with livestock watering as an intended use asked for more than 278.35 acre-feet in a single application in the two years following the moratorium.

And he said the evidence shows the small ponds would not affect the Great Salt Lake. “If it did show that, then it shouldn’t have been approved,” the speaker added.

State Engineer Teresa Wilhelmsen said she approved those rights based on criteria set out in state law and exemptions allowed under the moratorium.

Wilhelmsen said she declined some applications because they duplicated the small domestic allowance, writing there’s “no reason to believe that multiple applications akin to a larger filing can be approved without impairing existing water rights.”

Are the boundaries right?

Great Salt Lake Commissioner Brian Steed said the state is evaluating the boundaries of the moratorium on most new water rights in the basin. His office has recommended changes to the number of acre-feet people can access in a year when they receive new water rights.

Changes to either the moratorium or the base allowance would be targeted at increasing lake levels and conserving water as Utah continues to grow.

In both cases, Steed said, the state will exercise caution and use data to make informed decisions about the best path forward.

The Tribune analyzed dozens of water rights applications submitted during the two years following the moratorium. That analysis found many of the new water rights granted as of the end of January were in the West Desert, near the Promontory Mountains and in communities near the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge. Those areas are all within the Great Salt Lake basin as defined by the U.S. Geological Survey but were left out of the moratorium’s boundaries.

Some were in areas where Utah is still building homes and other rights were grandfathered in.

“I don’t want to be the guy that’s causing housing prices to go up or cause a housing scarcity,” Steed said.

Kyle Roerink, executive director of the Great Basin Water Network, said 2,500 acre-feet of water might not seem like a lot in context. If there are continued declines, though, 2,500 acre-feet could become significant, Roerink said.

He also questioned whether there actually is water available for people seeking water rights and said the state needs to think about what a new appropriation means for the potential of future conflict and the public welfare.

A spokesperson for Cox did not respond to requests for comment on the proclamation and possible changes, instead leaving it to media representatives with the Office of the Great Salt Lake Commissioner and the Division of Water Rights to take inquiries.

“Extreme drought, climate change and increased demand continue to threaten the Great Salt Lake,” Cox said in a statement when he issued the proclamation. “We are united in our efforts to protect this critical resource and are taking action to ensure existing flows continue to benefit the lake. When conditions improve, the suspension can be lifted.”

Advocates have concerns about excluding the north arm

However, some people are concerned about the exemption of a large part of the lake’s massive basin.

The lake’s retreat to dangerously low levels at the end of 2022 prompted Cox and the state resources managers to raise the breach in a rock-filled railroad causeway bisecting the Great Salt Lake’s north and south arms.

That effectively sacrificed the north arm to slow the southern arm’s surging salinity levels, which had started killing off its microbes, brine flies, brine shrimp and the birds that depend on them.

Now, though, water is flowing between the two arms again, and lake levels are approaching the point of having “one lake instead of two different water bodies,” Steed said in a November media availability.

Steed has previously said the state is managing the lake as one entity and will not raise the breach again unless the south arm hits 4,190 feet above sea level. It sat at 4,192.6 feet as of Monday morning.

Friends of Great Salt Lake, a decades-old organization focused on protecting and preserving the lake, has cited the strategy based on one lake when protesting recent water rights applications within the basin not covered by the proclamation.

Excluding groundwater inflows to Gunnison Bay and the remainder of the north arm “no longer reflects the state’s management position,” one protest reads.

The organization also requests in those protests that the state reconsider whether “excluding the entirety of the West Desert Basin — an integral part of the Great Salt Lake Basin — from the protections afforded by the Proclamation is appropriate.”

Steed said the state is already in the process of doing so, especially as officials learn “the really high importance of groundwater.”

“We really are taking this one step at a time as we get more data,” he said.

How groundwater impacts the Great Salt Lake

Most new water rights are not siphoning away the Great Salt Lake’s tributaries, like the Bear, Weber, Jordan and Provo rivers. They are drilling new wells. But signs are pointing to important connections between groundwater and the Great Salt Lake.

A study published last year found groundwater discharge, or water that flows out of the ground toward the surface when underground aquifers reach a certain saturation level, accounts for about 313,500 acre-feet a year to the lake — much higher than studies in 1976 and 2000 that estimated 75,000 acre-feet or anywhere from 6,250 and 100,000 acre-feet of groundwater enter the lake each year.

The new study also found groundwater is important for the lake’s salinity, said Grant Ferguson, an expert in groundwater hydrology. Ferguson teaches geological and environmental engineering at the University of Saskatchewan, has taught hydrology and atmospheric science at the University of Arizona and has done research on the Upper Colorado River watershed.

There’s important context to consider about where wells are going in, Ferguson said, and it will take detailed studies to determine whether wells are affecting stream flow, he said, as they have in Kansas.

Wells will always remove water from the aquifer below the earth’s surface, he said, but in some cases, they’re also taking from what would have eventually discharged to the lake’s tributaries or the streams feeding those rivers.

Concerns about ‘pace and scale’

Attorneys for the Bear River Canal Company protested multiple applications, citing concerns about “the pace and scale of groundwater development in Box Elder County.”

That concern is cited in a protest to an application for 1.73 acre-feet a year that also argues “numerous” small applications have a “cumulative impact.”

Keeping in mind the state’s ongoing growth, officials think it’s time to re-evaluate whether the allowances for new water rights are the right amount, Steed said.

“We have conversations about conservation, about growth and about the lake,” Deputy Great Salt Lake Commissioner Tim David told legislators during an interim meeting. “We really need to be having one conversation about (conserving) in ways that can provide water for growth and provide water to the lake.”

The commissioner’s office is asking the state to set up a process to determine that decreased amount, Davis said.

Data will be their guide, Steed said, and it will take a lot of time and “buy-in from a lot of folks.” There’s no set time yet, he said, since they’re still talking with the Legislature and other policymakers.

‘Just to use less water’

Ferguson, the groundwater hydrology expert, said while people need water, the answer to most of the Great Salt Lake’s problems is “just to use less water.”

Kansas and other Great Plains states are still feeling the effects of decisions that led to the Dust Bowl even a century later, he said. Production on submarginal lands and abandonment of soil conservation laid the groundwork for the severe soil erosion that caused horrific dust storms amid a string of droughts.

“Maybe we have an opportunity to do something different,” Ferguson said.

The state is asking people to reduce their water usage, and Steed said it doesn’t have to mean major changes. Officials are asking for a 10% reduction overall, and that could be as simple as shaving two minutes off a 20-minute watering cycle, he said.

“That’s not a huge change, but it’s a huge water savings,” Steed said. “I promise almost every lawn in Utah could withstand two minutes less watering.”

Roerink, with the Great Basin Water Network, wants the state to move forward carefully and think about the future.

“Water available today doesn’t mean that it’s going to be available five or ten years down the road,” he said. “We should be moving with an abundance of caution.”

Utah has “one of the better standards” for considering new water rights, he said, but there are lots of nuances that “are the blessing and the curse that we have to grapple with in the coming years.”

New water rights might not have an immediate effect, he said, but they could do harm down the road and Utahns need to be “asking how we’re leaving this place for future generations” and balancing future water needs against the here and now.

“There could be a point down the road … where that could be some of the only drinking water that’s left for a community,” Roerink said.

Meanwhile, Wilhelmsen thinks Cox’s proclamation has helped.

“We could have seen a lot more applications than we did by having the proclamation in place,” she said.

It’s given the state a pause to finish up studies and get better data to determine the best path forward, she said. Wilhelmsen also recommends the proclamation remain in place longer than initially proposed.

Steed doesn’t see the moratorium going away any time soon.

“As long as the Great Salt Lake is in this position,” he said, “all of us water nerds will be saying it’s probably a good idea to keep that in place.”

Megan Banta is The Salt Lake Tribune’s data enterprise reporter, a philanthropically supported position. The Tribune retains control over all editorial decisions.