Utah Rivers Council

Utah Rivers Council Protect, Restore, Explore - A Grassroots Voice for Utah's Rivers https://www.paypal.com/donate?hosted_button_id=XX6ES4ENDSRRY

08/27/2026

You can’t save a dying patient while unplugging their life support.

The Great Salt Lake has been shrinking for decades because of excessive upstream diversions on its three rivers, the Weber, Jordan, and the Bear River. The Bear River is the largest, providing about 60% of the surface water to the Lake, but it is under threat from special interests as we speak.

Bear River Development is a 4 billion-dollar proposed water project that would add 3–5 reservoirs and a pipeline to divert the Bear River to the lawns of the Wasatch Front. These diversions would take up to 30% of the Bear River’s annual water flows, dropping Great Salt Lake water levels severely. This diversion would be the final nail in the coffin that drives people away from the Wasatch Front in droves.

While some claim that Bear River Development is no longer happening, or won’t happen for a long time, it is time for Utahns to wake up and stop being so naïve. Proposed Bear River Development has been quietly gathering funds from sales taxes on everything purchased in Utah from a stick of gum to an automobile. The account where these funds sit holds 280 million dollars for Bear River Development construction.

And there is a state official whose job title is “Bear River Development Planning Manager.” How is there a government employee paid to advance a project that isn’t advancing?

Bear River Development has been approved by the Utah Legislature through the Bear River Development Act. Our organization was successful in removing two of the damsites from that statute in 2002, but the diversion and other damsites are still there. We also unveiled a bill in 2023 to redirect Bear River Development’s tax funds to instead go to Great Salt Lake restoration projects, but it was opposed by the water lobby and never made it out of committee. The bill was run again during the last legislative session, but it was held once again because of the water lobby’s opposition.

It is physically impossible to save the Great Salt Lake while building new water diversions on the Bear River. Diverting the Bear River will dramatically lower the Great Salt Lake, increase Northern Utah’s toxic dust storms, and threaten wetland habitat for millions of migratory birds.

De-authorizing Bear River Development must be a top priority for every single Utahn.

Visit greatsaltlakewaterkeeper.org to help us oppose the special interest corruption advancing this threat to the Great Salt Lake.

08/20/2026

How long will we allow backwards leadership to keep us trapped in 1922?

The Bureau of Reclamation’s new Environmental Impact Statement for the Colorado River’s future represents a tragic missed opportunity for the seven Colorado River Basin states to adapt to the 21st century.

Water leaders from the seven states failed to reach an agreement in their backroom meetings, so the Bureau was forced to devise its own plan. This plan is meant to replace the old guidelines which expire in December. The expiring guidelines were established in 2007 in response to what at the time was thought to be a short-term drought. These old guidelines dictated different levels of water cuts to California, Nevada, Arizona, and Mexico based on water levels at Lake Mead.

To say that the drought persisted far longer than anticipated is an understatement. We now know that the word “drought” is a misnomer for decades of climate change in the American West which has reduced snowpacks in the Colorado River’s headwaters. Colorado River flows averaged over the last 25 years are 22% lower than the 20th century average. And rock-solid science demonstrates that climate change is going to get worse, so flows as low as 30 or 40% less than the 20th century are likely.

State water leaders had decades to prepare for this reality by establishing new guidelines to adapt to this climate change reality. They could have prohibited irresponsible new diversions. They could have abolished the arbitrary line in the sand which lumps three states and Mexico into one camp and four states into another. Dividing these states into two regions causes unfair treatment of some states while obscuring the waste of other states.

The Bureau’s proposal would force 3.6-million-acre feet in water shortages to the Lower Basin states of California, Nevada, and Arizona during dry years, while merely calling on the Upper Basin states of Colorado, New Mexico, Wyoming, and Utah to voluntarily conserve up to 200,000-acre-feet.

This paltry goal represents a mere 5% of the Colorado River water use of the Upper Basin. Utahns remain the country’s most wasteful per person municipal water users. This plan fumbles the opportunity to pressure Upper Basin states to stop wasting Earth’s most precious resource. Meanwhile, Utah leaders have advanced new diversions of Colorado River water, like the Lake Powell Pipeline, the Green River Diversion, and the Price River Diversion.

It’s time for the entire basin to face the fact that the Colorado River has been over-diverted, over-consumed, and inequitably divided.

Visit utahrivers.org to learn more.

Want a chance to see Jack Johnson live? As part of our All At Once partnership, we’re raffling off a pair of Jack Johnso...
08/17/2026

Want a chance to see Jack Johnson live? As part of our All At Once partnership, we’re raffling off a pair of Jack Johnson concert tickets to his concert on September 4th at the Utah First Credit Union Amphitheater.

TO ENTER THE RAFFLE YOU MUST:
Join our support network by filling out the form below! After you fill out the form, you will be added to our email update list.

FOR ADDITIONAL RAFFLE ENTRIES:
Tag a friend on our giveaway post (each comment tagging a friend = 1 bonus entry)
Share the giveaway post to your story for +3 entries

Raffle closes on August 23rd at 11:59 MT

*These tickets are not re-sellable! If you win, you will give us the two names of who is attending and then pick up your tickets the day of the concert at will call with matching IDs. Please do not enter if you cannot, or are not interested in, attending the concert.

https://forms.gle/d7nRV8RQJmKBgcdW8

08/13/2026

How long are Utahns going to waste the Great Salt Lake on their sidewalks?

Residents along the Wasatch Front waste massive amounts of water each summer by running sprinklers during rainstorms, maintaining enormous ornamental lawns, and dumping water onto sidewalks, streets, and gutters.

Seeing this waste can be shocking to visitors from the rest of the dry West, but many Utah residents and institutional leaders don’t think twice about wasting water.

Even as the Great Salt Lake continues to shrink, this tragic water waste at our feet goes on because many dismiss this devaluation of water as if it is somehow universal. That’s why Utah is decades behind other states in conserving water.

That’s also why we launched the Wastewatcher photo & video contest to raise awareness about water waste in Utah cities.

If you live on the Wasatch Front, you will see homes, businesses, churches, schools, and other properties wasting water every day. When you do, pull out your phone, take a picture or shoot some video, and submit it using the link in our bio.

Winning entries in both the photo and video categories will receive awesome prizes from some of our favorite Utah businesses including Orbit Irrigation, Pingora Gear, and Pale Blue. All three companies support our values of conservation and sustainability. Winners and runners up in both categories will also receive a bunch of other awesome prizes, including some Utah Rivers Council swag.

All videos should be at least 10 seconds long, and you get bonus points for good shot composition, recognizable landmarks, and humor. AI submissions will be disqualified.

You can submit as many times as you want, but entries must include the date and location so we know exactly when and where water that could be flowing to the Great Salt Lake is being wasted. Please capture your footage quietly and respectfully. Don’t confront anyone about their water waste.

Submit your entries of water waste in Utah cities by September 15th.

https://utahrivers.org/wastewatcher-contest

08/06/2026

Utah leaders just sold us out to special interests without a second thought.

In July, Governor Spencer Cox and Utah’s congressional delegation proudly endorsed the gutting of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments, removing federal protection for some 3 million acres of public lands and shrinking the boundaries to just 10% of their previous sizes.

The original monument boundaries protected priceless tribal cultural sites and pristine red rock landscapes and desert ecosystems, all of which provided sustainable tourism revenue for rural economies. But these monument protections also safeguard watersheds and the water quality of our water supply.

Together, Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante are home to thousands of miles of streams and rivers, including Indian Creek, Calf Creek, Wahweap Creek, and other Colorado River tributaries like the Paria, Escalante, and San Juan Rivers. Although some of these desert streams may be ephemeral, keeping them clean is important for protecting our water supply.

By slashing land protection for the monuments, our leaders have opened these watersheds up to a myriad of new development including uranium mining, oil and gas drilling, and other destructive projects that could devastate the landscape and leave behind a toxic legacy that could last for decades.

Rolling back federal protection could threaten people living across a broad geography. National monument designations improve water quality and quantity for communities downstream.

Tribes across the southwest, many of whom fought tooth and nail for the designation of these monuments, are already living through the consequences of our toxic industrial past. Thousands of people living on reservations are forced to rely on contaminated water sources or simply do without running water. Forfeiting the ancestral homelands of these tribes to enrich the wealthy from extractive industries, only deepens this shameful inequity.

Monument protection also safeguards America’s rich fish and wildlife legacy left to us by previous generations, including bighorn sheep, black bear, mule deer, mountain lion, and the 200 avian species of Grand Staircase-Escalante like the American kestrel, the Bald Eagle, and the endangered Southwestern willow flycatcher.

Prioritizing insatiable greed over wildlife, irreplaceable landscapes, and public welfare is the exact same kind of “leadership” that has been drying up the Colorado River and the Great Salt Lake for decades. It’s time we remind our state leaders they work for us, not money-hungry moguls.

Visit utahrivers.org to help us hold state leaders accountable and protect Utah’s waterways.

07/30/2026

Utahns may soon have their water supplies cut thanks to failed leadership in the Colorado River Basin.

Climate change and new water diversions have been depleting Colorado River flows for decades, which is why Utah is staring down the barrel of the worst-case scenario: curtailment. Curtailment means a forced water cut wherein the government shuts off our Colorado River water supply.

Families along the Wasatch Front use Colorado River water, which is threatened by looming water cuts because water leaders have failed to come to an agreement.

This is uncharted territory. Colorado River users have never been curtailed before, but we do know that the water supplies to junior water users will be shut off first, protecting more senior water rights holders.

In Utah, agricultural users have senior rights because Utah’s farms predate most of our cities, so farmers would be curtailed last. Those with junior rights, especially suburban Wasatch Front residents, could be first in line for cuts. The recent announcement that lower basin states will cut 3 million acre-feet of water use won’t prevent these cuts because climate change and upstream diversions have shrunk Colorado River flows by 22% compared to the 20thcentury, so the only thing standing between us and water cuts is a razor-thin margin of river flows.

But we haven’t reached the bottom of climate change impacts on the Colorado River, and we could see a decline in annual flows of 30% or more.

Our elected officials should do everything in their power to avoid curtailment, but they have wasted precious time pretending climate change isn’t real. Imagine how much better off Utahns would be if our leaders had spent the last two decades investing in water conservation as aggressively as other states did — instead of pursuing extravagant water projects to divert water that doesn’t exist.

If we hold our leaders accountable for jeopardizing our water supply, we can still avoid the worst impacts of forced water cuts and more petty feuds over who gets to hoard Earth’s most precious resource.

Read our report, A Future on Borrowed Time, to learn more:https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5a46b200bff2007bcca6fcf4/t/61b678ae088ad458939d92c4/1639348411964/The+Colorado+River+A+Future+on+Borrowed+Time.pdf

07/23/2026

If we’re going to solve the Colorado River crisis, we need to stop thinking of it as a problem of us versus them.

You may have heard about the seven Colorado Basin states’ failure to agree on how to share the load of water cuts from too many diversions and climate change across the region. Even though water leaders knew for 20 years that the old river agreement would expire now, they’ve missed deadline after deadline and are now careening toward forced water cuts and costly litigation.

In 1922, the signers of the first Colorado River Compact created massive ripple effects when they overestimated the amount of water in the river, and left Mexico and tribal nations out of the agreement. This put us on a collision course between the states, Mexico, and the tribes of the Basin.

Jumping forward to 1944, Mexico and the U.S. agreed to a treaty which gave 1.5 million acre-feet of water to Mexico, further straining the river’s flows.

Jumping forward to 1948, another Colorado River Compact was signed which stipulates that the three Lower Basin states get the first 7.5 million acre-feet of water each year. All states agreed that the four Upper Basin states get the leftover water. This leftover water is shared among the four states by various percentages.

Everyone agreed to this because the Lower Basin was more developed at the time, with a population five times larger than the Upper Basin, and was using much more Colorado River water.

Even today, the four Upper Basin states are only using about 5 million acre-feet of water each year.

This unequal water use between the two basins makes some shout about equity, but it’s this arbitrary divide between the Upper and Lower Basin — US vs THEM — that is the problem.

Visit utahrivers.org and read our report, A Future on Borrowed Time, to learn how we can rectify what we have done to ourselves and our neighboring Americans.

07/16/2026

Today marks one year of producing Liquid Courage! To celebrate, Joe is responding to some of the thousands of good, bad, and ugly comments we've received over the last year.

From dismantling climate change denial to unpacking shortsighted propaganda that any water entering the Great Salt Lake is water wasted, we don't hold back in this episode.

It isn't all bad, though. Joe also takes a moment to highlight an important Great Salt Lake victory we achieved with the help of our phenomenal audience last year.

For everyone who has watched Liquid Courage, commented (good or bad) on our videos, and gotten involved with our work over the last year, thank you!

You can come out to celebrate this milestone with us at Epic Brewing on July 23rd. $1 for every draft pint sold that day will go directly to our efforts to save the Great Salt Lake.

See you next time!

07/09/2026

Help our petition to raise Utah’s conservation goals reach 1,000 signatures!

Utah is only months away from ending one of its worst water years in modern history. Because of climate change, our rivers and lakes are dropping to abysmal levels. Utah Governor Spencer Cox has responded with a statewide drought emergency declaration, but unfortunately, his proposed solution is about as effective as praying for rain.

In his executive order, the Governor shared a list of optional water conservation suggestions, like installing low-flow toilets and removing unnecessary lawns. You might notice that this voluntary approach puts the onus for solving systemic issues on individuals, which is absolutely embarrassing when compared to leadership once shown during a similar crisis in a state many Utahns love to hate: California.

In 2015, California was in the throes of a multi-year drought. To address this crisis, then-Governor Jerry Brown issued an executive order requiring businesses to dramatically cut water use. It also offered rebates for water-efficient appliances, replaced 50 million square feet of lawns with drought-tolerant landscaping, and called water agencies to charge more for high water use. This strong leadership cut water use in California by 25% that year alone, saving 1.8 million acre-feet of water.

Why is Utah ignoring this example and settling for our current plan to reduce water use by just 0.5% each year for the next 50 years? Could it possibly be because Governor Cox’s administration is advancing $6 billion in spending for Bear River Development and the Lake Powell Pipeline? Could it possibly be because water conservation will make these wasteful boondoggle projects completely unnecessary?

This climate change megadrought should be a wakeup call to all Utahns and their leaders. It’s time we join the rest of the western US in embracing the real solution to climate change: water conservation. Please, sign our petition at save2forutah.org to call on Governor Cox to increase Utah’s annual water conservation goal to a reasonable and necessary 2%.

07/02/2026

This fourth of July, we're asking you to join us in fighting one of the oldest and most pressing threats to our democracy: special interest corruption.

President Thomas Jefferson wrote, “I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength.” And monied corporations were still a major problem in the 20th century when President Theodore Roosevelt noted, “To dissolve the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of the day.”

Fast forward to May of 2026 when Governor Cox issued an executive order to increase transparency around data centers, calling for “transparent, meaningful and thorough opportunities for public comment.”

But records uncovered show the Governor met with the Stratos data center team months before the Utah public was told about the project. He only issued this order long after the public outcry against the data center reached epic proportions. This performative transparency is just the tip of the iceberg.

Keeping the public in the dark is how some Utah water agencies do business. Utah leaders keep creating agencies that are exempt from transparency and accountability. From MIDA to water districts who enjoy taxation without representation and spend millions on lobbyists, Utah is infested with special interests that are virtually untouchable.

This corruption is drying up the Great Salt Lake and will cost Utah tens of billions of tax dollars for toxic dust mitigation.

So, after 250 years, do Americans finally have the courage to crush special interest corruption? If you’re among those brave enough to try, visit utahrivers.org to get involved.

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4855 S 900 E #202
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