UTAH STATE CAPITOL—Concern over the Great Salt Lake continues and there are several bills in the legislature that address possible solutions. Rep. Ray Ward, R-Bountiful has a somewhat unique bill, HB247, that considers funding of activities that benefit the Great Salt Lake, specifically brine shrimp that are vital to the ecosystem and serve as a primary food source for migratory birds.

“So a couple of decades ago, there came a time when the legislature thought to itself, ‘we need some money for our protected species account,’” said Ward. “In particular, the use of that account in general when there is a species that the state is afraid is going to be listed as an endangered species and the state wants to take action to protect that species as best as it can before it gets that listing on that federal level.”

In order to do something useful, that account would need some money, he said. “The legislature at the time had a solution – brine shrimp – there’s a lot of money in that. So they put a tax on the brine shrimp industry.”

Think of it as a severance tax, Ward said. “If you take the brine shrimp from the lake you’re going to pay a tax and then the money from that was put into this species protection account and used for that purpose. It has been used for that for a long time.”

The net effect of the bill would take that brine shrimp tax and instead move it so that it would go to state sovereign lands, he said. “And it would be used for the purchase of water rights that the state has a chance to lease to go into the Great Salt Lake as well as other projects that directly benefit the brine shrimp.”

This becomes possible to consider, because of changes that were made last year that have an alternate source of funds that go into that species protection account, Ward said. “Last year the tax produced around $800,000 a year and what we have done for quite some time is take $125,000 of that each year for the Great Salt Lake Advisory Committee and just give them that $125,000 and the rest went into the species protection account.”

Last year the legislature placed a new tax on largely solar farms but some other energy installations as well, he said. “At the time we put that in place it’s estimated that amount would be around $6 million a year. So quite a bit larger than the amount that we previously were putting into the species protection account.”

That’s just a new tax, said Ward. “We're just getting started doing it right now. But then the way we have the law set now is that both of those sources, if you will, would go to that same thing. What this bill would do would be to say ‘we have this new source that we think is coming in that we think is quite a bit larger than what it was before and that will make sure that we have enough and in fact more than what we had before in the species protection account.’”

Then the brine shrimp tax is redirected, he said. “We’d still keep exactly the same for the advisory committee. That part wouldn’t change one thing. It would still go to that group the same as it has before.”

The remainder of the brine shrimp tax would then go to the sovereign lands account, said Ward. “The state would list out the two purposes, either for the purpose of leasing a water right to go into the lake, which then does benefit the brine shrimp population or for any other projects that they felt like would be helpful to the health of the brine shrimp population which secondarily does also provide a protection to the other species which rely on the brine shrimp population.”

Although this is a small amount, he said, it’s a really important step to have some ongoing commitment to get some more water into the lake and that is the impetus for the bill.”

As of Feb. 6 HB 247 was House/2nd reading. For more information about the bill visit Ray Ward.