New Proposal Wants To Pay Farmers To Send Water To Great Salt Lake

(Salt Lake City, UT) — A Utah state representative wants to pay farmers to send some of their water to the Great Salt Lake. Democratic Representative Doug Owens is proposing “split season leasing,” which offers to pay farmers for not growing late-season crops and in exchange, they’d send the water they’d typically use for that crop down to the lake. The Great Salt Lake dropped to a historic low in 2022 from drought, water diversion and climate change, and it has been posing an ecological threat to the state. The idea of split season leasing has been negotiated for months, but it has support from a powerful agriculture group that represents the state’s farmers and ranchers.