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The Utah Division of Wildlife Resources surveys a variety of bird species from an airboat Monday, April 29, 2019, on Ogden Bay of the Great Salt Lake.

BEN DORGER, Standard-Examiner file photo

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Former Ogden City Councilwoman Amy Wicks has been named the Great Salt Lake waterkeeper, through a partnership between the Utah Rivers Council and the Waterkeeper Alliance.

Photo supplied, Amy Wicks

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This illustration shows birds from across the Americas that make use of the Great Salt Lake during their migratory journeys.

Image supplied, Waterkeeper Alliance

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Great Salt Lake Collaborative

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Editor’s note: This article is published through the Great Salt Lake Collaborative, a solutions journalism initiative that partners news, education and media organizations to help inform people about the plight of the Great Salt Lake — and what can be done to make a difference before it is too late. Read all of our stories at greatsaltlakenews.org.

Millions of migratory birds representing 338 species from every country in the Americas make their way to the Great Salt Lake each year to rest and rejuvenate.

But what if that body of water — the largest saline lake in the Western Hemisphere — goes dry, as it threatened to do in 2022? This question weighs heavily on the minds of environmental stewards, former Ogden City Councilwoman Amy Wicks among them.

“Imagine departing on a very long trip, expecting to have a hotel to rest your head and a place to eat along the way that was there for your ancestors, and instead finding a desiccated wasteland,” Wicks said during a press conference Friday. “The canary in the coal mine, birds can be an early indicator of potential danger or failure. Will we listen?”

Beyond the fowls of the air, a drying lake also threatens to foul the air with toxic haze.

“We know that declining water levels created exposed lake bed, and that the dust from the lake bed negatively impacts the air quality and health of the 1.6 million people who reside near the Great Salt Lake,” Wicks said.

The media event brought together two nonprofits — the Utah Rivers Council and the international Waterkeeper Alliance — to announce that the Great Salt Lake now has its own waterkeeper.

Wicks began working with the Utah Rivers Council in April 2024 as its Northern Utah programs manager, and after fulfilling the necessary requirements, the Waterkeeper Alliance accepted her application in December to become the Great Salt Lake waterkeeper.

“The goal of the Great Salt Lake waterkeeper is to promote public policy and action that will deliver substantial amounts of water and raise the lake levels to a minimal sustainable water level of 4,200 feet to ensure the health of this internationally vital ecosystem and provide habitat for the birds that we all share,” Wicks told reporters.

The 4200 Project, a Utah Rivers Council initiative unveiled in October 2023, is described in detail at https://4200project.org, with 4200 representing the water level (in feet) that the Great Salt Lake requires for sustainability.

“For recreation, hunting, sailing, mineral extraction, the brine shrimp industry — about 4,198 feet is the bare minimum for all those things to be OK,” Wicks said by phone recently.

Zach Frankel, executive director of the Utah Rivers Council, said the lake’s drastic drop in water levels in 2022 attracted widespread media attention.

“All eyes turned to Utah, wondering if the state was capable of protecting the Great Salt Lake for future generations of people and wildlife,” Frankel said, crediting the largest snowpack in 40 years for temporarily lifting water levels.

“Although there’s been a lot of conversation about Utah passing legislation to save the lake, in fact the lake has been dropping and dropping. And the clock has started on the next record low for the Great Salt Lake,” Frankel warned.

While residents can take action to conserve water, Frankel believes targeted legislative action is necessary to ensure that water actually reaches the Great Salt Lake.

“Certainly, you can reduce your water use, especially outside your home, which is 75% of the water we use in Utah,” Frankel said, noting that statistic also applies to businesses and other structures. “But we really need to be much more active in demanding accountability from our state legislators. Utah has the least expensive water rates in the U.S. and the highest per person municipal water in the country.”

As of 2024, the Waterkeeper Alliance reported having 307 waterkeeper teams in 47 countries that patrol and protect almost 6 million square miles of watersheds across six continents.

The Utah Rivers Council launched in 1994 as a small grassroots effort and has grown both in size and clout. In September 2023, it joined the American Bird Conservancy, the Center for Biological Diversity, the Sierra Club and Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment to sue the state of Utah for failing to safeguard the Great Salt Lake.

That litigation, argued by Earthjustice attorneys, has yet to be resolved.

Since 2022’s drought, state lawmakers have approved bills and spent more than $1 billion to conserve water, but environmentalists argued that nothing actually ensured that water made it into the lake.

Snowpack that varies wildly from year to year has still been the primary source to raise lake levels.