Better together
It's Heather May here from the Great Salt Lake Collaborative and Colorado River Collaborative. I want to share with you the accomplishments we've made in 2024. By we, I mean the partner newsrooms and journalists in our collaboratives. I also mean our supporters, who make the work possible. As a nonprofit, our work is dependent on donations, which are used to create impactful, multimedia journalism and unique community outreach events.
Please join me in celebrating this past year and consider a tax-deductible donation to power next year's accomplishments.
"Saving the Great Salt Lake is incredibly important and the public needs reliable information."
— Cathy, on why she gave to Great Salt Lake Collaborative
In 2024, we:
- Produced 297 stories in digital, audio and TV formats about water. Stories were created by 12 partner newsrooms and shared throughout the state via the Great Salt Lake news site, on member newsroom sites and social media, reaching all of Utah.
We spent $8,720 on our ad-free, paywall-free website, our expanded social media presence and our free newsletter, which is essential reading to keep up on water news in Utah.
- Reached new audiences with new partnerships: GSLC and the University of Utah created a capstone journalism class, resulting in 12 written stories and a three-episode podcast. Through the Salt Lake City Arts Council’s Wake the Great Salt Lake grant, we are working with Salt Lake City’s Spy Hop youth apprentices who will make short films, podcasts and zines. We are also collaborating with Plan-B Theatre on a play about the lake.
Our community engagement work costs $4,795, including classes, art events, farmers markets and book clubs, ensuring more people know what’s happening and can get involved.
- Improved and expanded water coverage: Through a generous donation by the Janet Quinney Lawson Institute for Land, Water and Air at Utah State University, we created the Colorado River Collaborative to apply our expertise and solutions-first reporting to explain how Utahns are impacted by the river and how they can address a dwindling water supply in the face of drought, climate change and rapid growth.
In-depth, collaborative and solutions-focused reporting projects cost $22,729 in 2024. Keep scrolling to see a sample of our impactful work.
"Very good and much needed work — I think it represents the foundation of what keeps our democracy viable!"
—Hal, on why he gave to GSLC
How GSLC does more together than one newsroom can do on its own. In 2024 our impactful work included:
- Cautionary tales from other dying inland seas: Central Asia’s Aral Sea shows how we may want to avoid manufacturing a smaller Great Salt Lake by using berms. California’s Salton Sea reveals how piping water from the ocean to fill the Great Salt Lake may be a pipe dream, and how that state’s dry lakebed is affecting public health, giving a preview of what may be in store for Utah.
- Lack of interest by Utah farmers in using drip irrigation to save water or in a program to give the saved water to the lake.
- The potential impacts on world food supply if the lake collapses.
- How some farmers and ranchers in Utah’s Colorado River Basin are experimenting with growing alternatives to alfalfa, exploring how much water is being saved and also the difficulties in changing crops.
- The ancestral ties that southern Utah tribes have with the Colorado River and its tributaries, a sediment crisis at Lake Powell, and the importance of the Green River on a rural Utah town.
"Your work has been a real game-changer in increasing awareness about the problems Great Salt Lake is going through."
— Carla, on why she gave to Great Salt Lake Collaborative
Our plans for 2025:
- Collaboratively cover the 2025 Utah Legislature — one of the busiest times for newsrooms and also when interest in our coverage spikes.
- Add new newsroom members, so that our work is seen by more Utahns.
- Closely follow new state plans to cut water use by 10.7% by 2030 in municipal and industrial water use and agriculture.
- Double down on our efforts to cover air quality issues related to the lake.
- Work with The Utah Investigative Project to investigate the quality of water Utah is so desperate to get to the Great Salt Lake.
- Report on Utah's reliance on the Colorado River as the distribution management agreement governing its use is renegotiated.
