Great Salt Lake Crossroads: Collapse or Comeback? by Jake Dreyfous from Grow the Flow

Park City Museum will host a lecture called Great Salt Lake Crossroads: Collapse or Comeback? given by Jake Dreyfous from Grow the Flow on Wednesday, April 9, 2025 from 5-6 p.m. held at the Education and Collections Center located at 2079 Sidewinder Drive. More information can be found at www.parkcityhistory.org.

Across the globe, saline lakes are collapsing due to human overconsumption of water, leading to long-term devastation to the health, economy, ecology, and culture of the adjacent communities. Out of more than 100 of these lakes across the globe, no community has ever successfully saved their saline lake. Without immediate and sustained intervention, Great Salt Lake—the largest saline lake in the western hemisphere—faces the same fate.

Great Salt Lake’s disappearance is not a distant future. It is our present.

What is the future of Utah’s economy in a dust ridden Salt Lake Valley? Where will 12 million migratory birds travel when the ecosystem collapses? What of our beloved Greatest Snow on Earth? All these questions address what Utah stands to lose if Great Salt Lake disappears. But, what do we stand to gain, if we become the first community to save their saline lake? Explore these questions and the mysteries of Great Salt Lake with Jake Dreyfous, Managing Director of Grow the Flow.

Grow the Flow is a political advocacy non-profit harnessing the political and public will to restore Great Salt Lake by empowering citizens, identifying non-partisan solutions, and leading collaborative efforts with NGOs, the private sector, community members, institutions, and government leaders to get water to the Lake.

Jake Dreyfous is a fifth-generation Utahn and holds a degree in environmental studies and biology from Middlebury College. He is a passionate birdwatcher, waterfowler, skier, and fly-fisherman. He has worked for The Nature Conservancy of Utah, the Woodwell Climate Research Center’s community science initiative Science on the Fly, Save the Bay, and the Utah Rivers Council. Jake works as the Managing Director of Grow the Flow to ensure future generations of Utahns can enjoy Great Salt Lake and its ecosystem, without the threat of its loss.