SALT LAKE CITY — Oct. 28, 2025 — Great Salt Lake Rising, a new coalition accelerating the effort to restore Great Salt Lake by 2034, convened its inaugural working session this month with leaders from government, philanthropy, academic, and business communities. Governor Spencer Cox joined participants in voicing support for the lake’s restoration as the coalition announced five working groups to move quickly from ideas to on-the-ground results.
The meeting follows the governor’s September announcement of the Great Salt Lake 2034 Charter, a $200 million public-private partnership to restore Great Salt Lake ahead of the 2034 Olympics. As part of that effort, Great Salt Lake Rising—led by Josh Romney of the Romney Group—will direct $100 million toward projects that deliver water to the lake, complementing Ducks Unlimited’s initiative to raise $100 million for wetlands restoration and conservation.
“While I’m governor, you have my full support,” Cox said, “and we’re building this to continue well beyond my time in office.”
Romney is joined on the Great Salt Lake Rising board by Great Salt Lake Commissioner Brian Steed, Deseret Management Corp. Executive Vice President Sheri Dew, Eccles Foundation President and COO Lisa Eccles, FJ Management CEO Crystal Maggelet, television producer Mark Burnett, Ivory Homes CEO Clark Ivory, Utah Department of Natural Resources Director Joel Ferry, Larry H. Miller Company Vice Chairman Greg Miller, Great Salt Lake Artemia Chairman Tim Hawkes, and BYU ecologist and Grow the Flow Executive Director Ben Abbott.
At the Oct. 14 meeting, Rep. Casey Snider (R-Paradise) outlined Utah’s recent progress—appointing a Great Salt Lake Commissioner, modernizing water rights, and launching hundreds of agricultural optimization projects. Yet, all efforts to date have only secured about 2% of the water needed to restore Great Salt Lake to a healthy level. Independent economic analysis estimates a full lake rescue will cost between $2-5 billion over the next decade. Meeting this challenge will require 30-50% reductions in water use by farmers, cities, and industry.
“A lot of people outside of the state have written the lake off,” said Abbott. “The fact that no one anywhere in the world has solved this problem just makes it more important for us to win.”
To guide this work, Great Salt Lake Rising has established five working groups: Finance & Fundraising, Policy Innovation, Research & Management, Technological Innovation, and Stakeholder Engagement.
These efforts come as Great Salt Lake hovers near historic lows, threatening air quality, ecosystems, and billions of dollars in economic activity. Scientists warn that without urgent action, the lake risks crossing irreversible thresholds—threatening the same kind of collapse that has devastated communities near drying saline lakes worldwide. Great Salt Lake Rising’s inaugural working session signified that Utah leaders are committed to preventing this outcome—and are determined to become the first community in the world to successfully restore a saline lake.
