The history of the West is often told as a triumph of grit and resourcefulness against a harsh, indifferent landscape. Yet as the Great Salt Lake continues its dramatic recession, we are faced with a stark question: Will our resourcefulness extend to reversing a self-made crisis? The recent powerful commitment from Utah’s leaders — political, business and philanthropic — suggests the answer is a resounding yes, provided we all first do the necessary work of imagining that possibility and then working to realize it.
The idea that we can and will save the Great Salt Lake is no longer a utopian fantasy; it’s a foundational goal that requires a unified commitment from everyone breathing the air from off the lake, which means all of us.
Utah Gov. Spencer Cox captured this sentiment when he said, “The lake is everyone’s heritage and everyone’s responsibility.” Speaking collectively, he declared, “We will not let the Great Salt Lake fail. Period.”
Saving the lake is more than a promise; it is an act of collective imagination, seeing a future where the lake is not a dried, toxic-dust-spewing hazard but a thriving, healthy ecosystem that blesses all creatures, including those of future generations.
That imaginative vision now has the beginning of a real foundation beneath it. The recent announcement of $200 million in initial pledges from the private and nonprofit sectors — $100 million from Ducks Unlimited for conservation and a matching $100 million from the business coalition Great Salt Lake Rising — is a historic down payment on that vision. It signals a critical unity, a recognition articulated in the new Great Salt Lake 2034 Charter that a healthy lake is indispensable for public health, ecological values and a robust state economy.
The 2034 Winter Olympics have provided a potent, decade-long collective challenge: to raise the lake’s level by seven feet to a healthy elevation of 4,198 feet by the 2034 Winter Olympics. This timeline is a brilliant piece of strategic imagination. It gives a generation-defining challenge an international, immovable deadline, galvanizing action from the Legislature to farmers, businesses, municipalities, faith communities, individual homeowners and ultimately ordinary citizens. As Cox noted, we want the world to witness our “pioneering spirit.”
But achieving that goal requires more than bold vision; it demands concrete, sustained action. The Great Salt Lake Strike Team’s report is sobering. It will take at least 700,000 additional acre-feet of water per year to reach that goal under normal conditions. In persistent drought, that number nearly doubles. While the recent dedication of approximately 280,000 acre-feet through leases and donations is a commendable start — a feat thought impossible just a few years ago — it is, in the context of the lake’s needs, just a beginning, but many of humankind’s most significant achievements have succeeded from such a small, seemingly insignificant beginning.
This is where the collective imagination of all Utahns must be awakened. Political leaders have successfully set aside ideological differences to enact crucial legislation, from mandatory water meters to allowing water to be legally leased for the lake. Now, every sector must play its part. Farmers, who have already shown a willingness to participate, will be critical partners. The energy sector, businesses and cities must commit to deep, innovative conservation. But we ordinary citizens who benefit from a healthy lake must also do our part — and believe it will make a difference.
As Henry David Thoreau once mused, “You have built castles in the air. That’s where they belong. Now put foundations under them.” The $200 million is the first massive block of that foundation. The Great Salt Lake is an intrinsic part of Utah’s economy and soul. Saving it will require a sustained, multi-billion-dollar effort, but it begins with this unified, imaginative resolve.
The world is watching. If Utah succeeds in pulling its great saline lake back from the brink, it will indeed be “one of the great environmental successes ... in the history of humankind,” according to Ben Abbott, the executive director of Grow the Flow. That success is now within our reach, powered by a vision of what the lake can be and a collective commitment to make it so.