Group launches another billboard showing Great Salt Lake's 'dire' conditions

SALT LAKE CITY — A group advocating awareness of the shrinking Great Salt Lake has launched another billboard campaign to alert drivers to the lake's declining water levels.

Grow the Flow, an initiative of the nonprofit Conserve Utah Valley, said the billboard will rotate among several locations and be displayed to drivers on Interstate 15 and I-215 in Salt Lake and Davis counties.

It's the second time the group has sponsored a billboard. The first one was installed in February 2025. How long will it be up this time?

"Permanently," said Ben Abbott, an ecologist at Brigham Young University and the executive director at Grow the Flow. "Until the lake's full."

The billboard will display real-time water levels at Great Salt Lake, said Samantha Hawkins, Grow the Flow's communications director.

"It will automatically update as the lake moves," Hawkins told KSL. "You'll see it going down over the next couple of months."

When the billboard was first displayed early last year, the Great Salt Lake sat at just over 37% full, according to Grow the Flow, while it's now fallen to just under 30%.

"We really want (drivers) to see where the lake's at and how dire the circumstances are," Hawkins said.

The Great Salt Lake has been suffering from low water levels driven by overconsumption and ongoing drought. Still, Hannah Freeze, the new Great Salt Lake commissioner, said last month that things would be worse if not for recent conservation and legislative efforts.

Several Republican lawmakers toured the lake last month and pledged to continue working to get more water to the lake. Grow the Flow acknowledged the state's efforts but noted they fall "well below what is needed to reverse the lake's decline."

"Now is the time to harness the years of legislative preparation and intense public concern about the lake," said Abbott, the group's executive director. "The next several months will be critical in determining its future. We cannot rely on a good snow year to reverse the lake's long-term decline — Great Salt Lake will only recover if we make it a political and public priority."

Grow the Flow said a shrinking Great Salt Lake means a threat of toxic dust to 2.5 million Utahns, along with impacts to wildlife and the ski tourism industry as lake-effect snow decreases.

"Continued decline could put property values and public health at risk, with billions of dollars in potential economic losses," the group said in a news release Tuesday.