LISTEN: Historic water agreement for the Great Salt Lake reached

SALT LAKE CITY — Compass Minerals, a Utah-based company, says they will permanently donate more than 200,000 acre-feet of water a year to the Utah Division of Forestry Fire and State Lands to help the Great Salt Lake. 

 

To put that into scale, 200,000 acre-feet equates to about 99,000 Olympic pools, according to Ed Dowling Jr., President and CEO of Compass Minerals. 

This agreement is the result of H.B. 453, a bill passed in the 2024 Legislative Session, set to incentivize businesses to help with lake health.  

A ‘huge win’ for the Great Salt Lake 

“We have been working on this for years,” said Joel Ferry, Executive Director for the Utah Department of Natural Resources. “Multiple years of legislation has modified the way that we look at mineral extraction on the Great Salt Lake, and ultimately it’s set up a way that we can now coordinate and work with these mineral extraction companies to say how are we going to do this in a sustainable way, that really brings them to the table and has ownership and buy-in from the companies to help benefit Great Salt Lake.” 

Dowling said his company was involved in the bill’s passing. 

“What it says is that there would be taxes on your revenue unless you come into a voluntary agreement,” Dowling said. “The operators of the lake are subject to that under H.B. 453.”

This is a scaled approach to incentivize conservation, Ferry said. 

“If they can deploy new technology to extract those minerals without having to consume so much water, than they can pay a lower rate.”

This agreement almost guarantees business stability, Dowling said. 

“What it really does for us is allows us to withdraw water for the lake, but this gives predictability into our business.” 

When the lake is at its designated healthy level, above 4,198, the company can take their full allocation of water. 

Compass Minerals extracts salt from the Great Salt Lake for a variety of applications. Primarily, they are the world’s largest producer of  “sulfate of potash,” a plant nutrient. 

Dowling says its a substitute for chlorine. Certain plants like almonds or grapes don’t take well to chlorine, for which sulfate of potash is a substitute. 

“It’s our economic engine, it is for the state and it is for the company,” Dowling said. 

A ‘win-win’ for public-private partnerships

Much of Utah’s industry depends on the lake’s long-term sustainability.

“We’re as interested in the ecology of the lake as anybody. That is our lifeblood,” Dowling said.

Ferry called the Great Salt Lake a public resource on public land.

Companies like Compass Minerals have a right to use the water, since they have leases to operate on it, he said. This voluntary agreement rebalances the equation. 

“The state of Utah is going to benefit and these are critical minerals that are being mined out there, we don’t want to just shut them down, but we want it done in a responsible and a sustainable way.” 

This isn’t just a model for other companies, Ferry said. 

“This is the way of the future.”