THE GREAT SALT LAKE: FINDING COMMON GROUND AMONG COMPETING INTERESTS by Jeff Mayfield
What happens when a lake so important to wildlife, communities, businesses and families becomes everyone’s concern, but no one’s responsibility alone?
The Great Salt Lake is more than a landscape. Its water, economy, wildlife, communities, and their shared future are part of one shared basin.
As I stood staring across The Great Salt Lake, its calmness drew me in. Light shifted across the water, changing colors along the shoreline, sky and mountains. Small shapes moved across the vastness of the lake. What were they? What drew them here? The scene felt less like an ordinary lake and more like a great inland sea.
One question stayed with me: What am I really looking at? The Great Salt Lake is more than a landscape. Its water, economy, wildlife, communities and their shared future are all part of one basin.
That question led me to learn more about The Great Salt Lake—its history, wildlife, tributaries, communities and changing conditions. The more I learned, the more convinced I became that this cannot be treated as somebody else’s problem. The lake’s future touches wildlife, families, businesses, agriculture, public health, recreation, government and communities across the basin. What happens here reaches far beyond the water’s edge.
My concern for The Great Salt Lake is also shaped by more than 31 years in business and finance. My experience includes audit and consulting work in public accounting, followed by more than 24 years with a metal fabrication company, where I served as Chief Financial Officer and Chief Executive Officer. I have also worked with state legislators in Tennessee from both business and ministry perspectives. Those experiences taught me something important: difficult problems with legitimate but competing interests are rarely solved by blame, slogans or one-sided demands.
They are solved by leadership.
The Aral Sea in Central Asia provides a powerful warning about the consequences of water-management decisions. Once the world's fourth-largest lake, it was sustained primarily by two rivers. Beginning in the Soviet period, extensive diversions of river water for agricultural irrigation dramatically reduced the water reaching the lake. As the Aral Sea shrank, salinity increased, fisheries collapsed, communities lost livelihoods, and exposed lakebed became a source of windblown salt and dust. In 2024, NASA reported that the Aral Sea had declined to approximately 10 percent of its original surface area.
The Aral Sea's decline was not the result of a single unsuccessful season. It developed over decades as decisions about water use accumulated into consequences affecting the entire region. Great Salt Lake is a different ecological system, and its future is not predetermined by the Aral Sea's history. Nevertheless, the comparison demonstrates that decisions benefiting individual water users can also produce consequences for a shared natural resource. It raises a leadership question: Are we considering the long-term consequences of today's decisions for the entire basin?
The first requirement is a common goal. Before stakeholders argue over methods, they need to agree on the destination. For The Great Salt Lake, that destination should include a healthier lake and ecosystem, viable communities, a strong economy, responsible water use and a future in which people and wildlife can continue to depend on the basin.
The second requirement is to bring the people closest to the problem into the process. Scientists know the physical system. Farmers know the realities of food production and water use. Businesses know investment, jobs and operating limits. Public-health professionals know risk. Conservation groups know about habitat and pressure on species. Government leaders know law, public responsibility and implementation. Residents know what it means to live with the consequences.
Each sees something important.
No one group has the entire picture.
The third requirement is shared responsibility, but that does not mean equal responsibility. Diverse groups have different impacts, resources, authority and ability to act. Fairness means seeing those differences while still asking what each major group can reasonably contribute.
The fourth requirement is trust. In business, I learned that people rarely give their best thinking if they believe a decision has already been made. They do not want to be invited only to receive instructions. The same principle applies here. If agriculture, business, conservation, government and communities enter the discussion assuming the others are enemies, lasting solutions will be difficult to build.
Developing the above requirements further:
* That does not mean avoiding challenging decisions.
* Collaboration without accountability accomplishes little.
* Goals need to be measurable.
* Responsibilities need to be clear.
* Progress needs to be tracked.
* When actions are not working, they should be adjusted.
* When new information changes our understanding, plans should change with it.
That is continuous improvement, and it applies beyond the factory floor.
Fortunately, the Aral Sea also offers evidence that deliberate intervention can produce measurable improvements. Following construction of Kazakhstan's Kok-Aral Dam in 2005, freshwater was retained in the North Aral Sea. NASA's satellite observations documented rising water levels, and a 2026 scientific review published in Ambio reports that salinity declined from approximately 30 grams per liter to 6–8 grams per liter following construction of the dam. Aquatic conditions improved, and commercial fishing recovered. Yet much of the southern Aral Sea remained severely degraded.
The contrasting outcomes demonstrate two important leadership lessons. First, allowing environmental deterioration to continue can produce consequences that become increasingly difficult to reverse. Second, coordinated intervention can produce measurable improvements when appropriate action is taken. The North Aral Sea recovery does not provide an engineering blueprint for Great Salt Lake, but it demonstrates why implementation, scientific monitoring and accountability matter.
Utah's Great Salt Lake Basin Integrated Plan already seeks to build shared understanding, quantify water resources, evaluate competing needs, and recommend actions. These efforts provide an opportunity for stakeholders with different responsibilities to consider the basin as a connected system rather than approaching its challenges only through their individual interests. The leadership challenge is to maintain constructive dialogue, recognize legitimate differences and work toward decisions that respect both the lake's ecological needs and the communities that depend upon it.
The future of Great Salt Lake is connected to the entire basin—its water, land, communities, economy, and natural systems.
We should also reject two false choices. One is that protecting Great Salt Lake requires ignoring economic reality. The other is that economic concerns justify postponing environmental responsibility indefinitely. Neither approach is sustainable. A lasting solution must survive ecological, economic, political and human realities at the same time.
Utah does not need every stakeholder to agree on every method. It does need enough agreement to move toward a shared destination.
Great Salt Lake belongs to no single interest. Its wildlife does not experience the lake separately from its water. Communities do not experience the basin separately from its economy. Businesses, farms and families do not exist outside the environment in which they operate. The Great Salt Lake ecosystem demonstrates how closely those natural relationships are connected.
Each interest is different, but the future is connected.
That is why I believe the future of Great Salt Lake requires shared leadership, shared accountability and shared responsibility. Success will not be measured by whether one side wins.
It will be measured by whether people with different interests can build a strong solution. That solution must protect both the lake and the communities that will inherit its future.
AUTHOR BIO
Jeff Mayfield has more than 31 years of business and financial experience, including audit and consulting in public accounting and more than 24 years in executive leadership as a Chief Financial Officer and Chief Executive Officer. He is an author, artist, and ordained deacon at First Presbyterian Church in Salt Lake City.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Great Salt Lake. “Environment and Ecology.” Office of the Great Salt Lake Commissioner, State of Utah. Last updated July 20, 2026. https://greatsaltlake.utah.gov/environment-ecology/
Great Salt Lake. “Industry and Recreation.” Office of the Great Salt Lake Commissioner, State of Utah. Last updated September 24, 2026. https://greatsaltlake.utah.gov/industry-recreation/
National Aeronautics and Space Administration. “Dunes and Desert Replace the Aral Sea.” NASA Earth Observatory, June 2, 2024. https://science.nasa.gov/earth/earth-observatory/dunes-and-desert-replace-the-aral-sea-152887/
National Aeronautics and Space Administration. “North Aral Sea Recovery.” NASA Earth Observatory, May 4, 2007. https://science.nasa.gov/earth/earth-observatory/north-aral-sea-recovery-7645/
Rzymski, Piotr, Włodzimierz Marszelewski, Michał Rybak, and Piotr Klimaszyk. “Health Impacts of the Aral Sea Disaster: Current State, Research Gaps, and Mitigation Perspectives in the North Aral Sea Region.” Ambio, published online April 4, 2026. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-026-02385-z
Utah Department of Environmental Quality. “Great Salt Lake Dust Information and Frequently Asked Questions.” Division of Air Quality. Accessed October 11, 2026. https://deq.utah.gov/daq/great-salt-lake-dust-information-and-frequently-asked-questions
Utah Division of Water Resources. “Great Salt Lake Basin Integrated Plan.” Accessed October 11, 2026. https://water.utah.gov/gsl-basin-integrated-plan/
Utah Division of Wildlife Resources. “About the Great Salt Lake.” Great Salt Lake Ecosystem Program. Last updated July 31, 2026. https://wildlife.utah.gov/gslep/about
Utah Division of Wildlife Resources. “Birds at the Great Salt Lake.” Great Salt Lake Ecosystem Program. Last updated July 31, 2026. https://wildlife.utah.gov/gslep/wildlife/birds
