What Happened at Weber Basin Water Talks

In case you missed it — last week we partnered with our friends at Grow the Flow to host the Weber Basin Water Talks, an evening of conversation, connection, and collaboration for Great Salt Lake. More than 120 community members joined us, including city council members, planners, water district managers, researchers, students and residents from across the basin.

Photo: Ken Krause

Over the last few years, one of the greatest needs I’ve seen in the Great Salt Lake space is improved coordination and communication among nearly everyone involved — decision-makers at all levels, water managers, municipal leaders, nonprofit groups, and the public. This kind of cross-sector dialogue is exactly what’s needed to build the civic infrastructure the lake’s recovery depends on.

Getting water to the Great Salt Lake is profoundly complex. With rising public interest and urgent warnings about the lake’s collapse, there’s been a rush toward “solutions” that often overlooks that complexity. Rather than slowing down to understand where the priority needs and opportunities really are, decision-makers can make hasty decisions that may not be the best use of resources. Meanwhile, when the public and those of us in the advocacy community don’t see progress happening as quickly as we like, or we don’t have a clear understanding of what is being done, we often assume the worst and jump to blame and shame to assuage our frustration.

Photo: Ken Krause

As a state, we also don’t have a strong history of thinking holistically about our problems in the way that Great Salt Lake is now asking us to. Great Salt Lake is demanding a paradigm shift in how we approach water issues. Over the last few years, a wide range of groups, organizations, agencies, and stakeholders – who had never before coordinated around managing the lake – has started working together. Building this kind of coordination simply takes time. 

Last week’s forum was a small but meaningful step toward this goal of stronger cross-sector coordination: building shared understanding and deepening the relationships that will shape the future of our communities.

Image of State and federal level stakeholders in the GSL space that are now figuring out how to work together to manage the lake. This graph does not include cities, nonprofits, water users, etc.

We kicked off the evening with our panel, “Regional Collaboration for Great Salt Lake,” featuring Ogden Mayor Ben Nadolski, Assistant GM Darren Hess of the Weber Basin Water District, Rep. Jill Koford, and Jake Serago, a senior water engineer with the Division of Water Resources.

Our discussion focused on the challenges and opportunities of managing water supply and growth in the context of a shrinking Great Salt Lake. We touched on the district’s work with cities to advance conservation, DWRe’s efforts to bring stakeholders together through the GSL Basin Integrated Plan, Mayor Nadolski’s collaboration with Sen. Musselman on the Ogden Canyon pipeline project, and Rep. Koford’s commitment to keeping the lake front and center at the Legislature.

As always, a single panel can only scratch the surface but it was heartening to see leaders from different levels of government speaking candidly about the complexity of the moment, the challenges they face, and their desire to get this right.

L to R: Chandler Rosenberg (Great Salt Lake Policy Associate, Stewardship Utah), Ogden Mayor Ben Nadolski, Rep Jill Koford. Photo: Ken Krause

“This is the single most important issue facing our state right now. If we don’t get GSL right, we lose so much.” – Rep Jill Koford

“You cannot think about one stretch of river without thinking about the stretch of river above it and below it. There was a time when I didn’t connect Ogden and the GSL in my own mind. There are paradigms that we’re pushing and constantly challenging.” - Mayor Nadolski

“Outdoor irrigation is what’s hurting the Great Salt Lake. 80-95% of that water is depleted, evaporates, and doesn’t reach out underground aquifers. We’re losing that water. We have to be very careful about our outdoor irrigation and how we grow moving forward.” - Darren Hess, Weber Basin Water Conservancy District

“One homeowner can do very little to help GSL. There’s not even one entity in the basin that can save GSL. This may be daunting but it's also exciting. We’re all together in this, it’s really collaborative.” - Jake Serago, DWRe

Grow the Flow followed with a conversation featuring Drs. Ben Abbott and Kerry Kelly. Dr. Abbott offered a comprehensive overview of the challenges facing the lake and the scale of the problem, highlighting the need for emergency measures this year, alongside deeper long-term changes. Dr. Kelly provided a deep dive into the public health risks posed by dust emissions from the exposed lakebed, underscoring that despite measurement uncertainty – we know that dust emissions are increasing.

Dr. Ben Abbott. Photo: Ken Krause

“What we need more than water is trust in one another.” - Ben Abbott

Restoring Great Salt Lake requires not only good science and policy, but an informed, connected public and strong relationships across agencies, local governments, and communities. This means creating forums like this that help break down silos, create shared understanding, and keep the lake on the agenda year-round — laying the groundwork for the long-term systems change that Great Salt Lake demands. We hope you’ll join us at the next one. Stay tuned!