Most of my emails focus on what's happening in the housing market right now. This week I want to zoom out and talk about something bigger that a lot of Utahns are paying attention to.

The Great Salt Lake.

It's not a direct housing story, but it's a long-term story that will affect our state, our economy, and eventually our real estate. So let’s dive in.

The Great Salt Lake isn't just a body of water sitting next to Salt Lake City. It's tied to almost every major piece of life along the Wasatch Front.

Air quality and dust. This is the one most people are paying closest attention to. As the lake recedes, more lakebed becomes exposed, and that sediment contains naturally occurring elements plus legacy pollutants from over a century of mining, smelting, and industrial activity in the watershed. Researchers from the University of Utah, USU, and BYU have measured arsenic, lead, manganese, copper, lithium, and antimony in playa samples, with some metals at levels that exceed EPA residential screening guidelines.

Breathing in dust like this over time isn't trivial. Researchers point to risks like respiratory irritation from metals like manganese and copper, developmental concerns in kids tied to lead exposure, and elevated long-term cancer risk associated with arsenic. Kids, the elderly, and people with asthma or heart conditions are the most vulnerable.

The good news is that the Utah Division of Air Quality has monitored airborne metals near the lake for over a decade and hasn't yet seen a clear increase tied to the lake's decline. But researchers are clear this isn't a clean bill of health, and the risk grows as more lakebed gets exposed. That's why the state launched UDORN (the Utah Dust Observation and Research Network) in 2025, adding 9 new monitoring stations and upgrading 13 existing ones, with real-time data available through the Utah Air app.

The economy. The lake contributes roughly $1.9 billion to Utah's economy each year and supports more than 7,700 jobs across brine shrimp harvesting, mineral extraction, recreation, and tourism.

The snow. The "lake effect" off the Great Salt Lake drives a meaningful share of the Wasatch's annual snowfall. Less lake means less snow, which means less water in our reservoirs the following year and a hit to the ski industry that brings billions into the state.

The birds and wetlands. The lake supports about 80% of Utah's wetlands and serves as a critical staging ground for roughly 10 million migrating birds each year. It's one of the most important saline ecosystems in the Western Hemisphere.

The 2034 Olympics. Salt Lake City is hosting the Winter Games in 2034. The state has set the lake's recovery as a visible benchmark for that moment.

This is why the response has been so coordinated. State government, federal agencies, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, private business, and academic institutions are all moving in the same direction at the same time, which doesn't happen often.

The lake's South Arm ended the 2025 water year at 4,191.1 feet above sea level, the third-lowest elevation on record since 1903. That puts it about 6.5 to 7 feet below what the state considers a minimum healthy level.

Over half the lakebed is currently exposed. And we all know we didn’t get a whole lot of snowfall this year, which means less runoff to refill the lake this spring.

The good news? Salinity levels have actually stabilized. They're down from a peak of 18% in 2022 to closer to healthy targets today, thanks to adaptive management of the causeway berm between the North and South arms. That's protecting brine shrimp, brine flies, and the migratory bird population that depend on the lake.

In September 2025, Governor Cox and dozens of state and community leaders signed the Great Salt Lake 2034 Charter, formally committing to restore the lake to healthy levels by the 2034 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.

Between 2021 and 2025, the state delivered nearly 400,000 acre-feet of water to the lake through a combination of water leasing, conservation programs, and large-scale removal of invasive Phragmites reeds. Water dedications grew almost 9 times over that period, from about 18,000 acre-feet in 2021 to over 163,000 acre-feet in 2025.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has also stepped up in a big way. Back in 2023, the Church donated over 5,700 water shares from the North Point Consolidated Irrigation Company to the state of Utah, equivalent to more than 20,000 acre-feet of water flowing to the lake every year in perpetuity. It's believed to be the largest permanent water donation to benefit the Great Salt Lake in Utah's history. Those water rights date back to 1862 and 1915, which means they carry senior priority and actually reach the lake even in drought years. The Church has continued to evaluate additional water assets across five counties around the lake and remains an active partner in ongoing conservation work.

On the private business side, Josh Romney, founder of Intercap Lending and board chair of the new nonprofit Great Salt Lake Rising, launched a $100 million philanthropic campaign last fall. The goal is to hit that number by the start of the 2027 legislative session. Romney estimates the full cost to restore the lake will run into the billions.

Federal dollars are flowing too. Last spring, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation released a $50 million grant for Great Salt Lake projects covering water leases, conservation, and wetland restoration. In February of this year, President Trump met with Governor Cox and pledged $1 billion for the lake in his proposed federal budget, calling it a "critical economic and ecological asset" (though that still has to clear Congress). The Trump administration also settled a long-running federal-state dispute over 22,000 acres of Great Salt Lake wetlands near Brigham City for $60 million earlier this year. And on the state side, Utah won a bankruptcy bid in 2025 to buy 144,000 acre-feet of annual water rights from US Magnesium for $30 million, permanently halting one of the lake's largest historic industrial water withdrawals. Ducks Unlimited has separately committed $100 million toward wetland restoration and water inflows.

The restoration strategy has four main buckets:

The 2026 Strike Team report flagged something worth paying attention to. Updated water budget modeling now shows that municipal and industrial use, which is mostly residential outdoor watering, accounts for about 26.8% of human-caused water depletions in the basin. That's a meaningful upward revision from previous estimates. Residential lawn watering alone accounted for the equivalent of roughly one-quarter of all agricultural depletions in 2024.

In other words, individual households along the Wasatch Front have a bigger role to play than we used to think. A few things that actually move the needle: smart irrigation timers, fixing leaky sprinklers early in the season, replacing high-water grass with drought-friendly landscaping in areas you don't actively use, and choosing a more drought-tolerant grass when you reseed or lay new sod.

On that last note, Kentucky bluegrass tends to be the default in Utah, but it's also one of the thirstiest grass types you can plant. A few alternatives that do well here:

I know this edition was a break from what I normally write about, and The Great Salt Lake isn’t going to move home prices tomorrow. But it's part of the long-term story of living and owning property along the Wasatch Front.

The silver lining to all of this is that the same coordination that's pushing this forward (state, federal, private, academic, religious) is the kind of environment that keeps Utah a place people want to move to and invest in, which is good for our market.

I'll keep watching how this develops and share updates when they affect our market directly. In the meantime, if you're curious how anything I write about (this story or the day-to-day market stuff) might apply to your home or neighborhood, you know where to find me.

Here to serve,

P.S. Want to know how your specific home and neighborhood are doing in today's market? Reply with your address and I'll put together a free, no-pressure market analysis tailored to your property. No obligation, just good information.