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Community Healing Amidst Crisis
What does community look like? My mom was diagnosed with severe breast cancer when I was a sophomore in high school. She experienced pain cancer patients are all too familiar with. While I would never wish cancer on anyone, our community's response to my mom’s...
The Great Salt Lake Migration
Picture by Mary Anne Karen, used with permission Growing up in the Evergreen State of Washington, I loved coming to Utah in the fall. The vibrant oranges, reds, and yellows of the trees were magic to me as a child from a state with evergreens that lacked fall colors....
AJR is Asking You to Care About Great Salt Lake
Photo Credits: Jeremiah Kane | AJR Productions AJR is an up and coming NYC-born pop band that has something to say about Great Salt Lake. The band–which is made up of brothers Adam, Jack, and Ryan–is in the middle of its 2024 tour around the United States, and...
Students to the Rescue!
When I was younger, I hardly knew what to do with myself. My time management skills were non-existent when I graduated high school, and in early college years I used to proudly label myself as “reckless and relentless.” Fast forward a decade or so, past many painful...
A dry lakebed will not just produce toxic dust. It will also emit CO2 into the atmosphere.
We already knew that climate change is partially contributing to the decline of the Great Salt Lake. Thanks to recent research, we now know that the decline of the lake is reciprocally contributing to climate change as well. In a new study published in the journal...
Highlighting our Great Salt Lake Ambassadors
Our Great Salt Lake Ambassadors are leveraging their unique skills and background to grow the flow one person at a time. Ambassadors meet with a member of the Grow the Flow team to develop a personalized volunteer plan specific to their interests and availability....
Loss of Great Salt Lake Could Cut Northern Utah Precipitation in Half
While living in Utah, I’ve often heard people refer to the state as one huge desert. While deserts certainly cover large sections of Utah, the Wasatch Front is actually a semi-arid region–an important distinction. The primary difference between deserts and semi-arid...
Your Showers aren’t the Problem
Photo by Don Grayston You shouldn’t feel bad about taking a little extra time in the shower. In fact, indoor recreational water usage only takes about 5% of the overall state water usage. There's also evidence that indoor water usage will actually all make it into the...
Welcome to Sailfest!
Special thanks to Jake Dreyfous for his contributions to this article. The Event What: Sailfest ‘24 When: June 15th from 10am-Dusk Where: Great Salt Lake State Park and Marina After five years of being on hold due to low lake levels, Sailfest is back! On June...
Inland Port Updates
Trucks move shipping containers at the Union Pacific Intermodal Terminal on Nov. 22, 2021 in Salt Lake City, Utah. (Photo by George Frey/Getty Images) Utah simply cannot catch a break from environmental injustice. Without fail, it seems, plans for development prevail...
Connecting with Great Salt Lake
Photo Credit: Charles Roscoe Savage Great Salt Lake is often thought of by Utahns and non-Utahns alike as buggy, boring, smelly, or even a waste of time. However, Great Salt Lake was once the recreational hotspot for Utahns, with dance halls, resorts, campgrounds,...
Hidden Dangers: How a Dried Up Great Salt Lake Could Poison Our Children’s Air
Air pollution is a silent killer. We can’t always see it, we can’t smell it, we can’t hear it–yet it fills the lungs of 2.5 million Salt Lake Valley residents. Great Salt Lake’s decline has exposed 800 square-miles of lakebed, where toxic levels of arsenic, mercury,...
How does the Utah State Legislative system work?
Even though the Utah Legislative session won’t start up again for another nine months, it’s never too early to start making plans for what policies we need changed. Because of that, here is a brief overview of how the Utah Legislative bodies operate. Utah state’s...
Hope for the Wilson’s Phalarope: The Need For an Endangered Species Act Listing
Photo Credit: Mary Anne Karren One of Great Salt Lake’s most unique residents is the Wilson’s Phalarope. The grayish-colored migratory shorebirds generally have rusty highlights on their long white necks and a wingspan of approximately 17 inches. They breed in...
Great Salt Lake: A Haven for Threatened Bird Species
All Photos Credited to Mary Anne Karren “We don’t own Planet Earth, we belong to it. And we must share it with our wildlife” –Steve Erwin Every year, the Great Salt Lake becomes a hub of activity as ten million birds descend upon its shores. Great Salt Lake’s...
Senator Sandall talks with Grow the Flow about Great Salt Lake and the future of Utah’s water security
Senator Scott Sandall wants to protect Utah’s water security well into the future. “We need to be thinking about what water supplies in Utah will look like 50 years from now,” Sandall said while speaking with Grow the Flow on February 14. As part of Sandall’s...
Final bills to watch during the 2024 Legislative Session
Image by Reginaldo Martins from Pixabay Information provided by the University of Utah's Wallace Stegner Center. For more details, click here. H.B. 453: Great Salt Lake Revisions (Sponsored by Rep. Casey Snider and Sen. Scott D. Sandall): We believe that this...
Lake-Facing Community: An Interview with Nan Seymour
Photo credits: Save Our Great Salt Lake We had the opportunity to sit down with Nan Seymour from Save Our Great Salt Lake and River Writing and talk about her work with the Great Salt Lake Vigil. Lake-facing citizens hold this vigil twice a day through the Utah...
A Declining Great Salt Lake→A Declining Global Economy
Brine shrimp—a crustacean native to Great Salt Lake—are about a centimeter in size. This makes them the largest animals that live in Great Salt Lake’s waters. Brine Shrimp survive by feeding on algae and are consumed by other crustaceans, fish, and birds around the...
Microbialites
All photos from Mary Anne Karren, used with permission This article was originally published on Mary Anne’s website, maryannekarren.org and has been republished with her permission. You may know that Great Salt Lake is essential for an astonishing 10-12 million...
Youth Town Hall–December 2023
Photo Credit: Utah House Democrats In December, Grow the Flow helped support a student-led Town Hall in Holladay City. A group of high schoolers from Skyline and the Youth Coalition for GSL asked compelling, pointed questions to panelists that included: Rep. Carol...
Interview with Patrick Belmont about GSL Plan
Last week, the Great Salt Lake Commissioner, Brian Steed, released his strategic plan for rescuing the lake. The plan outlined several ways that Utah can get more water to the lake, including investment in agricultural optimization techniques, a push toward water-wise...
Will we make 2024 the turning point for Great Salt Lake?
This blog post was originally posted by Ben Abbott on his personal blog. This Saturday, more than a thousand Utahns gathered at the state capitol to celebrate progress and support next steps in our efforts to restore Great Salt Lake. The number and diversity...
Air Pollution and Great Salt Lake
There are a lot of things that Utah is known for. From strange alcohol laws, to its highly religious population, Utah stands out in many ways. One of the most concerning things that Utah is known for, however, is its air pollution. Up until this point, most of that...
2024 Utah Snowpack Update
Utah’s Snowpack and the Outlook for Great Salt Lake At this time last year, Utah’s snow pack was sitting at around 160% of normal. We were skiing knee deep powder on the weekends and expecting longer commutes to work or school during the week. While another...
Farmer’s History and Future in the Great Salt lake Basin
Image Credit: Wolfgang Borchers on Pixabay Long before Brigham Young gazed over Salt Lake Valley and pronounced, “This is the right place”, many indigenous communities relied on the Great Salt Lake Basin. The Shoshone, Goshute, and Ute tribes depended predominantly on...
Secret Santa for Great Salt Lake
With Christmas around the corner, there’s a lot of great ways to serve the people around us. At Grow the Flow, we feel that a great way to serve our community is to prevent an environmental disaster by protecting Great Salt Lake! We compiled a list of possible ideas...
Town Hall with Rachel Whipple and Tyler Clancy
Representative Tyler Clancy and Provo City Councilwoman Rachel Whipple joined Grow the Flow yesterday for a town hall at Brigham Young University. Over thirty students, faculty, and community members gathered in person and over zoom to learn about water security and...
Native American History Month and Great Salt Lake
Photo: Carl Moore at Great Salt Lake, September 2023 by Teri HarmanSaving Great Salt Lake is not only about preserving water and vital ecosystems, but also protecting the legacy of human history. The Indigenous people of Utah were the first stewards of our saline...
Bear River Development Panel
We had an amazing turnout and support for this afternoon’s virtual panel on the Bear River Development. Experts on water policy, public lands, and lake ecology discussed questions relating to recent developments in the project. Tim Hawks, a former state legislator...
Emergency Press Release on Bear River Development
Image from Ecoflight One step forward and two steps back? New effort to build the Bear River Project threatens to wipe out any progress made towards saving Great Salt Lake FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE SALT LAKE CITY, UT, November 15th, 2023 - Multiple sources have...
What is Actually Happening with Great Salt Lake?
Photo credit: Logan Gardner “The Great Salt Lake is drying up!” “Are we all going to die in 5 years?” Maybe you’ve heard this statement or asked this question before. I have. If you’re not an ecologist, it can be hard to understand what’s actually going on....
The Bear River Development: a multi-billion dollar project looming over the Great Salt Lake’s future.
What is the Bear River Development? Enacted in 1991, the Bear River Development Act gives the Division of Water Resources (DWRe) the power to develop water on the Bear River and its tributaries to meet the demand of northern Utah’s growing population. The DWRe...
Slow the Flow vs. Grow the Flow
I’m guessing you have heard of Grow the Flow because you are reading this right now. If not, we are a movement dedicated to getting more water to the Great Salt Lake! So, what about Slow the Flow? While the names may be easy to mix up, we are two very different...
Summary of the Water Policy Accelerator
Photo by Unma Desai on Unsplash One of the key components of Grow the Flow is the creation of the Water Policy Accelerator. This is a team of environmental lawyers and policy experts who are working on drafting legislation to conserve and shepherd water to...
Summary of the Research Coordination Network
To determine what the various strategies we push for should focus on, a Research Coordination Network is needed to study the impacts of possible actions. An international team of social and natural scientists has been assembled to synthesize actionable research on...
Youth Coalition Launch
Youth Coalition Draws Impressive Crowd We were so grateful to join the Youth Coalition for Great Salt Lake at their kickoff event last Thursday. Congregating in the Salt Lake County government building on November 2nd, these high schoolers left us feeling inspired,...
Go ahead and flush
Photo from Mary Anne Karren This article was originally published on Mary Anne's website, maryannekarren.org and has been republished with her permission. When I first realized that sewage was being dumped into Great Salt Lake, it all started making sense. How...
Can Dams Save Great Salt Lake?
Dam History and PoliticsFor over a century, dams have been bastions of development in the Western United States. They were signs of man’s domination over what had previously been considered untameable land. Dams could do the impossible: bring water where there had...
Student Chapter Kickoff Event Was a Success!
Grow the Flow held its first multi-chapter student event yesterday, with participants from the University of Utah, Salt Lake Community College, Utah State University, Utah Valley University, Brigham Young University, and Skyline High School. An interdisciplinary...
Grow the Flow Press Release
For release on Wednesday, October 4, 2023 Grow the Flow Seeks 100,000 Citizens to Rescue Great Salt Lake SALT LAKE CITY, UT, October 4, 2023 - As the boost from this winter’s record snowfall wears off, Great Salt Lake remains a top concern for Utahns. With...
Lake Leaders Needed!
Welcome to Grow the Flow! It has been really encouraging to see the level and diversity of support for Great Salt Lake. It is clear to me that people from all walks of life see this as a question of legacy, values, and life. I hope that you feel welcome here, because...
Conserve Utah Valley and Grow the Flow
Originally posted on conserveutahvalley.org In 2021, Conserve Utah Valley was a fledgling grassroots organization. We got our start when Bridal Veil Falls, a natural treasure of Utah Valley, was under threat of private development. After a few intense months of work,...
Four Goals of Grow the Flow
Form a Citizen’s Lake Lobby of more than 100,000 members from all backgrounds. No amount of ecological work or legal scaffolding can replace the need to rehabilitate our relationship with Great Salt Lake. Sustained stewardship begins with affection and a change in our...
Summary of the Public Action Network
One of the major initiatives of Grow the Flow is to organize a diverse network of individuals, businesses, cities, and other organizations to work on changing the political landscape by increasing the political payoffs of prioritizing water conservation and the...