Note to readers •This story is made possible through a partnership between The Salt Lake Tribune and Grist, a nonprofit environmental media organization.
Utah resource managers have found themselves in hot water over who they allowed to drill new wells near the shores of the parched Great Salt Lake, and who they rejected.
At issue are two applications for new water rights. Both involved large ranches seeking to pump groundwater on the west slope of the Promontory Point peninsula, near the shores of the Great Salt Lake.
While Gov. Spencer Cox closed much of the Great Salt Lake basin to new water right applications in 2022, both applicants lie in an area exempted from the closure. Both claimed they would drill wells so deep, pumping wouldn’t impact flows to the shrinking neighboring lake.
The state’s Division of Water Rights approved the first petition, filed in 2023 by House Speaker Mike Schultz’s Keller Cattle Corporation. The second, filed in 2024 to use a portion of the water for lithium mining, was denied. In a rare move, State Engineer Teresa Wilhelmsen cited concerns about a water monopoly and affecting the neighboring lake.
The rejected applicant, Mango-Spiral Jetty LLC, sued the state this month over the denial.
“[The] State Engineer acted contrary to statute, ignored substantial and significant evidence, failed to adequately support its decision, and behaved in a seemingly arbitrary manner” in making her decision, the company wrote in a legal complaint on Jan. 8.
Environmental groups have defended the denial, saying the lake cannot sustain additional water use.
“The lake, the groundwater of the lake and surface levels of the lake are telling us there is no water available,” said Kyle Roerink, executive director of Great Basin Water Network. “That’s a key consideration regulators need to weigh.”
Water for ranching — and for lithium mining
Mango registered in Utah in 2019 and lists its agent as Matthew Garff, a co-owner of the Ken Garff Automotive Group empire. Rep. Brady Brammer, R-Pleasant Grove, and his law firm are representing Mango in the litigation. The company acquired its 5,300-acre Promontory ranch in 2018, according to legal filings.
Mango sought 1,260 acre-feet of groundwater, about enough to meet the indoor needs of 2,000 households.
Most of it would have supported ranching, per the applications, but Mango requested 300 acre-feet for mining. The company proposed drilling those wells less than two miles north of the Great Salt Lake’s shoreline and about two miles northeast of the Spiral Jetty, although the property owned by Mango includes the parking area for the famed land art sculpture.
(Christopher Cherrington | The Salt Lake Tribune)
The application doesn’t say what type of mining Mango intended to use the water for. But lithium startup Waterleaf Resources, and its parent company Lilac Solutions, currently leases property on land owned by Mango. Handwritten notes from the Division of Water Rights indicate the mining water was meant to be used by Waterleaf.
“Lilac is not involved in the dispute,” a spokesperson for the lithium company wrote in an email, “and we can’t comment on this specific inquiry.”
Representatives for Waterleaf told The Salt Lake Tribune on a tour in August they will mostly use briny water pulled directly from the Great Salt Lake to produce lithium. Once that brine runs through Lilac’s patented technology, almost all will be returned to the lake, the company said. The process, however, requires freshwater to rinse its proprietary ion filtration beads.
Waterleaf has filed its own application to pump 220,000 acre-feet from the Great Salt Lake, but company representatives said it will lease freshwater. It successfully completed a small pilot demonstrating its technology over the summer, but has yet to receive approval from the state engineer to use the lake’s water.
(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Mark Mulligan, Vice President of Engineering and Projects for Lilac Solutions, gives a tour of a pilot test program for extracting lithium from the Great Salt Lake without depleting water, Thursday, August 14, 2025.
Waterleaf wrote a letter to the division supporting Mango’s application in December, asserting the water would help it produce a federally recognized critical mineral while boosting the local economy. It said after using the groundwater in its extraction process, it will treat the water and send it to the Great Salt Lake.
A carveout to use water in the Great Salt Lake’s driest basin
Utah’s governor declared the Great Salt Lake basin closed to new water rights appropriations in 2022 in an effort to stave off the lake’s long-term trend of decline.
Cox excluded the west desert of Box Elder and Tooele counties, a region with little surface water and no tributary rivers that flow to the lake. But conservation advocates say its springs and groundwater still play an important role.
Schultz, R-Hooper, filed an application a year after Cox’s order, seeking to pump more than 550 acre-feet each year from springs and groundwater for his 25,000-acre ranch. The Utah Division of Water Rights approved his request in July 2024.
In an email, Schultz asserted the state engineer used a “long-established” process.
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) House Speaker Mike Shultz, R-Hooper, speaks on Monday, July 7, 2025.
“I respect the integrity of Utah’s water rights system,” Schultz wrote. “My Promontory water rights are designated for agricultural and wildlife purposes.”
The legal firm representing Mango, Brammer Ranck, declined to comment.
One difference between the two water rights applications was the number of protests, which require a formal letter and $15 fee.
Schultz’s petition received two protests, one from the environmental nonprofit Utah Rivers Council and another from Farmland Reserve Inc., an agriculture real estate arm of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Utah Rivers argued groundwater pumping would harm the already sapped Great Salt Lake, which sat on the brink of ecological collapse in late 2022.
Farmland Reserve, meanwhile, did not argue against the speaker’s water claim, but flagged more senior rights to water in the area.
Mango’s applications, by contrast, received more than half a dozen protests from environmental groups and nearby water right holders, including FRIENDS of Great Salt Lake, Great Basin Water Network, Bear River Canal Company, Salt Lake City Public Utilities and Farmland Reserve.
Water advocates weigh in
Most of the protests cited public welfare concerns with the neighboring lake, noting connectivity to groundwater in the area is not fully understood. Pumping water underground could further contribute to the lake’s decline, which hovers just a few feet above the record-low elevation it set in 2022, they said. The groups noted pumping groundwater and lowering lake levels could also harm public resources like wildlife, snowpack, air quality and nearby water users.
In her decision to reject all but one of Mango’s applications, Wilhelmsen agreed Promontory’s hydrology is “poorly understood.” Studies found groundwater contributes around 24,800 acre-feet to the Great Salt Lake each year, Wilhelmsen noted, “but this figure carries significant uncertainty and considerable variation.”
Even deep wells can cause pressure in aquifers to drop, impacting water users and springs miles away. Wilhelmsen pointed to Curlew Valley near the lake’s northernmost tip. “Extensive” groundwater pumping there created “substantial” reductions in the water flowing at Locomotive Springs, which lies about 15 miles away, she said.
(Photo courtesy of Kevin Perry) A downdraft from a thunderstorm generating dust plumes on the extreme northwestern portion of the Great Salt Lake playa west of Locomotive Springs Wildlife Management Area.
The state engineer also took issue with Mango’s filing of six consecutive applications to appropriate groundwater from two wells, noting the amount of remaining water available for use in the Promontory area is “limited.”
“Filing a consecutive series of applications,” Wilhelmsen wrote in her decision, “raises a concern of monopolization of a limited resource.”
But in its legal complaint, Mango asserted it filed multiple applications after consulting Division of Water Rights staff. The company also argued fears over a water monopoly “are mere speculation and not well taken” since the 1,260 acre-feet sought is “only a fraction” of what’s available, although exactly how much water underlies Promontory’s western slope appears unknown.
While Mango did not call out Schultz’s approved application by name, its legal complaint listed his water right numbers and contended that applications “mere minutes away” received the state engineer’s approval, even though they were hit with similar protests.
Wilhelmsen did approve a single one of Mango’s applications for 240 acre-feet of irrigation water because it was located farther away from the Great Salt Lake’s shore where other “recent, nearby applications that have been approved.” She specifically referred to Shultz’s water rights in her determination.
A spokesperson for the Division of Water Rights said the state is “confident” it made a fair, consistent and appropriate decision.
“We also respect the right of every applicant to challenge decisions,” the spokesperson wrote in email, “and we are committed to honoring the legal process as we respond.”
Representatives of the groups protesting Mango’s application agreed Wilhelmsen made the right call.
“It’s good for the state engineer to be mindful of requests for new appropriations of water in that vicinity of the lake,” said Lynn de Freitas, executive director of FRIENDS of Great Salt Lake, which also protested Waterleaf’s pending application.
Who will be allowed to protest water rights in the future?
Roerink, with Great Basin Water Network, took issue with the lack of detail in Mango’s application, including how and why it specifically wanted to use water for “mining.”
“Part of the reason we have the process that we do,” Roerink said, “is so the public knows what’s happening with its collective water.”
Water within Utah is owned by the state, which grants “rights” to residents and industries to put it to beneficial use. Great Basin has protested Waterleaf’s application as well.
Asked why more groups didn’t protest Schultz’s water rights, Roerink said the application fell through the cracks.
(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Lilac Solutions begins dismantling their pilot test program for extracting lithium from the lake without depleting water on the north arm of the Great Salt Lake near Rozel Point, Thursday, August 14, 2025.
“If somebody would’ve said, ‘Hey Kyle, do you want to sign on?’ I would have,” Roerink said. “It was probably a capacity issue at that time.”
With Utah’s annual legislative session underway, water conservation advocacy groups are worried a new bill would bar them from raising their concerns with the Division of Water Rights in the future.
HB60, sponsored by Rep. David Shallenberger, R-Orem, removes language that allows the state engineer to consider impacts to recreation, wildlife and the environment. The bill also narrows what the state engineer can consider “public welfare” as she makes decisions on water rights.
She may “only” consider issues about beneficial use and water “quantity, quality and availability,” if the bill becomes law. Roerink said the changes would make formal protests or lawsuits difficult for groups like his that don’t hold potentially impacted senior water rights.
“Do Utahns have the same ability to defend, protect and speak up for the waters of the state of Utah anymore?” he said. “HB 60 really guts the ability.”
De Freitas said her nonprofit will also monitor the legislation closely this session.
“It’s a work in progress,” de Freitas said. “Hopefully there will be a lot of discussion and improvement.”
The bill had its first hearing in the House Natural Resources committee on Friday, Jan. 23.