The governor of Utah has a problem. The Great Salt Lake is shrinking, and a dry lakebed threatens to send arsenic-laced dust plumes across the state’s most populated areas.
Gov. Spencer Cox has risen to national prominence in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s horrific slaying at Utah Valley University last month by calling on Americans to tone down toxic rhetoric. But a more literal form of toxicity will envelop Utah if Cox fails to lead urgent lake-saving efforts.
Faced with divided constituents and an imperiled ecosystem, Cox can enhance both the civic and physical health of his state by focusing his policy agenda around substantive issues like the lake — Utah’s most pressing problem — instead of hot-button culture wars. Children are particularly vulnerable to the dust, and with so many young lungs breathing northern Utah’s air, there is no time to waste.
The governor recently took an important step. Flanked by members of Utah’s Republican-dominated Legislature, Cox held a news conference along the shores last month where he announced a public-private partnership committed to restoring the waters to healthy levels before the 2034 Winter Olympic Games scheduled to be held in Salt Lake City.
Many Utahns celebrated the announcement as the most substantial commitment state leaders have ever made to restore the lake. But many others remained cautious in their optimism, wondering whether this was a photo op or a true watershed moment.
Their skepticism is warranted. Cox’s tone and urgency surrounding this issue have fluctuated. In late 2022, the lake — once North America’s largest saline body of water — dropped to its lowest level on record due to a century of overuse. Farmland and residential lawns soak up two-thirds of the water that would otherwise flow to the lake. The ecosystem teetered dangerously close to complete collapse.
“On my watch we are not allowing the lake to go dry,” Cox declared that winter. “We will do whatever it takes to make sure that doesn’t happen.” The state took several minor but important steps, appointing a Great Salt Lake Commissioner, modernizing water rights to incentivize conservation and launching hundreds of agricultural optimization projects designed to help farmers — like Cox himself — grow crops with less water.
Despite these steps, the lake still would have floundered without Mother Nature’s largesse. Two consecutive winters of record snowfall brought it back from the brink. But as water levels rose, urgency declined for Cox and fellow lawmakers as they failed to enact swift and lasting measures to reduce water consumption.
Perhaps influenced by anti-environmentalist sentiments in his party, Cox even began chiding scientists for spewing “doom and gloom.” But scientists continued to study the harmful effects of dust clouds emanating from parcels of parched lakebed. The toxins in the dust have been linked to respiratory illnesses, heart disease, reproductive dysfunction and cognitive impairment.
Saline lakes account for nearly half of total lake water volume on Earth. But across the globe, these once-vast inland seas are shrinking, and some have disappeared altogether. In each case, human agricultural consumption has primarily caused the decline. Without water to cover these lakebeds, naturally occurring toxins like arsenic, and human-caused pollutants — accumulated through generations of mining, agriculture and urban runoff — are carried by the breeze to the lungs of regional residents.
Southern California has seen this up close. Owens Lake in Inyo County disappeared in the 1920s thanks to upstream diversions that went to Los Angeles and nearby farmland. The dry lakebed eventually became the largest human-caused source of dangerous particulate matter pollution in the nation, forcing many nearby residents to move.
The state of California has spent more than $2.5 billion on dust abatement, adding gravel and other materials to the dry lakebed to mitigate the spread of pollutants. But Owens Lake was relatively small to begin with. These expensive band-aid measures are far less feasible at scale.
The Salton Sea, California’s largest saline lake, is also experiencing rapid decline, leading to exposed lakebed and fugitive dust events just 150 miles southeast of L.A. The consequences are already dire for surrounding communities. Children living near the Salton Sea are experiencing worse lung function due to their exposure to dust events, according to a three-year study published this month by researchers at UC Irvine.
The Great Salt Lake, more than five times larger than the Salton Sea, has a far more densely populated perimeter, with more than 80% of Utahns living along the Wasatch Mountain Range adjacent to the shore. These mountains received less snowfall last winter than the previous two years, and lake elevation is again spiraling toward 2022 levels. More than half the lakebed — an area roughly the size of Rhode Island — remains exposed.
No imperiled saline lake anywhere in the world has been rescued. Cox is confident Utah will be the first to succeed. For that to happen, there’s no time to accuse scientists of “doom and gloom.” There’s only time to act, especially as the health of Utahns hangs in the balance.
The governor impressed people around the country with his earnest pleas for unity after Kirk’s killing. But Cox can do more than call for friendlier politics. He can rally Utahns around a common aim: clean air. Unified efforts to achieve that aim will not only result in stronger lungs but a healthier polity as well.
The news conference was a good step, but this time Utah needs Cox’s consistent commitment to curb the state’s agricultural and urban outdoor water use so that the lake remains replenished even in years of drought. His leadership will ultimately be measured in water, not words.
Last winter I visited Guadalupe Center, an elementary school not far from the lake’s retreating shoreline. I asked a group of fourth-graders what they knew about the Great Salt Lake. “It’s drying up,” one said, “and the dust is really bad for you.”
We briefly discussed the causes and consequences of a dry lakebed, but rather than depress them with scenes of toxic clouds descending on their playground, I changed the subject to the migratory birds that fill up on brine flies at the lake before taking off to Central and South America.
One of the students interrupted: “But wait,” she said, “people are fixing the dust thing, right?”
Cox’s governorship will be a success only if he leads out on the world’s first successful effort to rescue an imperiled saline lake, helping Utah’s kids to breathe easy.
Addison Graham lives in Salt Lake City, where he studies public policy at the University of Utah.
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