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State agencies advance comprehensive management plan and rulemaking; advisors review conceptual salt‑balance map
Summary
Managers updated the council that Jacobs Engineering will lead an interactive, public-facing comprehensive management plan (CMP) for Great Salt Lake and Utah Lake; Division of Water Quality described pending rulemaking tied to House Bill 453 and requested technical volunteers. Staff circulated a conceptual salt-balance map and asked for committee comments by mid‑July.
Agency staff updated the advisory council on parallel planning and rulemaking efforts intended to guide long-term Great Salt Lake management.
Jeff (Jacobs contractor lead referenced) and staff said Jacobs Engineering was selected to prepare coordinated comprehensive management plans for Utah Lake and Great Salt Lake; planners described the CMP as a public-facing, online, iterative product that will link to the salinity-management plan and allow more frequent updates than traditional static documents.
Jim from the Division of Water Quality reported on rulemaking: finalizing an operator-certification rule (for new operations including lithium extraction) and initiating an informal rulemaking process to implement a provision in House Bill 453 that directs DWQ to develop permit limits for salinity dischargers to the lake. He asked the advisory council to consider serving as a technical sounding board or forming a volunteer working group.
Separately, Jake and colleagues presented a conceptual salt-balance map that layers inflows, mineral-extraction pond areas, groundwater arrows and other processes to help identify data gaps and prioritize studies. The committee recommended further review, suggested story-map functionality, and set a comment deadline (roughly July 12) to feed map updates into an August–September work session.
The council emphasized cross-agency integration, iterative plan elements, and early outreach to legislators and stakeholders; no new regulatory actions were finalized during the meeting.
