Three Years, $7.24 Million

The Disbursement Rate

The Trust's own reporting states that State Grant Money disbursed from its January 2023 inception through Dec. 31, 2025 totals approximately $7.24 million — against the $40 million appropriated by H.B. 410 in 2022. That's roughly 18 percent spent after three full years of operation, leaving about $32.76 million of the original appropriation not yet disbursed.

The Trust reports leveraging that $7.24 million against approximately $9.7 million in matching funds and donations — a ratio of roughly 1.4 to 1 — combining cash match, in-kind contributions, and water donations across the full three-year period.

A Total That Shrank

The Trust reports water transacted "on a diversion basis" of approximately 64,000 acre-feet in 2023, 69,000 in 2024, and an anticipated 72,485 in 2025 — followed by a stated baseline of approximately 59,000 acre-feet heading into 2026.

These figures aren't simply additive — the Trust's own framing describes them as a running total or baseline figure, not new acre-feet added on top of prior years, since the bulk of this water comes from donated and multi-year leased rights rather than one-time acquisitions. Even accounting for that, a baseline that drops from an anticipated ~72,485 to ~59,000 heading into the next year suggests some transacted water didn't carry forward — most plausibly because temporary leases expired.

The Trust states a Five-Year Strategy objective of 100,000 acre-feet of water. None of the individual year figures reported so far reach that number on their own, and the fluctuating baseline makes it unclear how close the Trust's own cumulative progress actually is to that target.

Where the Money That Moved, Went

Utah Code requires at least 25 percent of the $40 million — $10 million — go toward protecting and restoring wetlands and habitat. The Trust's wetland grant program has now run three rounds:

• 2023 (first year): $8,525,343 awarded across eight projects, covering nearly 13,000 acres, with applicants and partners providing at least $6.5 million in matching contributions — a match ratio of roughly 0.76 to 1.
• 2024: $5,479,914 awarded to four applicants across six locations, covering nearly 6,000 acres, with at least $0.6 million in matching contributions — a match ratio of roughly 0.11 to 1, far below both the 2023 round and the Trust's touted 1.4-to-1 overall figure.
• 2026 (announced June 22, 2026): $1,659,192.50 awarded to three Utah Division of Wildlife Resources projects, covering 567 acres, with DWR providing at least $555,700.48 in matching contributions — a match ratio of roughly 0.33 to 1, an improvement on 2024 but still short of 2023.

Across all three rounds, the wetland program has now protected or restored a cumulative 20,399 acres — past the Trust's own Five-Year Strategy goal of 20,000 acres, and ahead of the 2028 target date the Trust set for reaching it. That's a genuine accomplishment worth stating plainly alongside the slower pace documented elsewhere in this piece.

A newer, larger funding stream launched in 2025: a $53 million pool announced jointly with the Office of the Great Salt Lake Commissioner and FFSL. Of that, $50 million comes through the Great Salt Lake Water Delivery Program (coordinated with the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation) for voluntary water transactions, system conservation, and ecosystem/habitat projects. The remaining $3 million splits between FFSL ($2 million) and the Trust itself ($1 million). Applications closed Jan. 16, 2026; awards were expected in spring 2026 as of this writing.

Who Decides

For the wetland grant rounds, proposals were scored by a Technical Review Committee made up of Great Salt Lake ecosystem experts — but the Trust's own materials state that final award decisions were made by the Trust Advisory Council (the body now renamed the Trust Council) and FFSL, not the technical scorers.

Open Questions

• Why the Trust's own reported water-transaction totals (topping out around 72,485 acre-feet in a single year) don't reconcile with the 288,000 acre-feet figure cited in the state-commissioned drying-lakes report — see "What Losing the Lake Would Cost".
• How much of the $32.76 million not yet disbursed is earmarked for specific pending projects versus genuinely uncommitted.
• Why the wetland grants alone total more, in awarded dollars, than the fund-wide disbursement figure reported through the same period — whether that's a timing issue (multi-year payouts), a funding-source issue (FFSL money mixed in), or something else.
• Whether the 2026 baseline drop from ~72,485 to ~59,000 acre-feet reflects expired leases specifically, or some other accounting change not explained in the Trust's public materials.
• How this fund's own slow disbursement pace relates to the broader $511 million funding gap already documented across the state's larger enhancement-project list — see "$511 Million Short". These are different pots of money, and this piece doesn't assume they're connected beyond both reflecting money not yet reaching the ground.

Questions Worth Asking

For readers who want to press further:

1. Why did the reported water-transaction baseline drop from about 72,485 to about 59,000 acre-feet heading into 2026, and specifically what expired?
2. Which dollars in the wetland-grant totals are State Grant Money from the $40 million appropriation, and which come from FFSL's separate budget?
3. At the current disbursement pace, when would the remaining $32.76 million actually get spent?
4. Who is responsible for reconciling the Trust's own reported acre-feet figures against the 288,000-acre-foot figure cited elsewhere in state reporting?

Graded by the Rubric

Every case in this docket is graded against The Weber County Hive's standing five-part rubric — Power, Transparency, Financial Accountability, Environmental Impact, and Community Impact — not this reporter's opinion. The rubric asks the same five questions of every piece regardless of subject.