The Great Salt Lake was twice the size it is today when the Mormon pioneers arrived in 1847. This nugget didn’t come up in the full-house showing of “The Lake” and panel talk afterward at the Eccles Center in Park City a couple of weeks ago. It didn’t come up in a living room presentatio n at a home in Pinebrook days later. But the lake became a vision of home for beleaguered Latter-day Saints at the edge of Illinois, and it is the defining symbol of the state now for the world. My faith in its survival I think rests on this. Even with Utah’s leaders letting things slip as far as they have. From the film, I picked up the rising danger of the dust and futility in the halls of the state Capitol. In the presentation at the house, I got ugly statistics and then inspiration, even hope. Senate Leader Stuart Adams had just paid at the ballot box for letting his eye stray to the big bucks proposal for a giant, water-hungry data center near the lake. As symbolism goes, this alone may prove a savior. We’ll see. More quietly, the state has begun investing a little more in the lake’s health, a trickle primed to grow, we learned from a law professor and lobbyist for Grow the Flow, a group launched in 2023 and led by a star of the documentary film, ecologist Ben Abbott.   The thing is, if you ask in the spirit of July 4 what is the most American thing about Utah, it’s not Mike Lee, “Secret Lives of Mormon Wives,” a faith still doubted by some fellow Christians, red rock desert, Zion or even beehives. It’s the lake. So is Utah going to lose the lake under its current leaders’ watch? What would this say about the church, the state, its politicians and their supermajority party if they let that happen? Thirsty alfalfa is more important than 3 million lives? Let God decide and save notions of stewardship for begging in our prayers? The business climate so earnestly built into the nation’s best will just weather the Great Salt Lake drying up with enough deals?   The declines in birds, insects and brine shrimp, the shoreline shrunk by half, children shooed inside while the wind is up, the human population’s health degrading. Understand this has merited a collective shrug — minor concern — in the Legislature and the Governor’s Office. The evidence here is tacit. Pretty words. More important things. Where trans people go to the bathroom. An ironic fixation on stealing federal land, including stunning parks and monuments, for the state to look after instead. Overruling local governments while espousing local control. Keeping archaic fossil energy production going artificially. Trying to secretly fast track that giant data center next to the lake itself. This is what I thought about while watching the earnest film and sitting through an instructive presentation in a room with a picture window view of the Utah Olympic Park: Is this state really capable of pulling its head out of … enough and in time to do this? With this Legislature, that governor? And what of the Olympic spirit anyway? Will the lake be gone when that great flame is lit at Rice-Eccles Stadium in 2034, that bright beacon of hope? Will the speakers be exalting Utah’s values next to a rejuvenated lake or a dead sea? Triumph or hypocrisy? We are capable of each. Plainly.  The presenters of the film and the talk I attended said there’s enough water in the lake’s own watershed to save it and have most of our proverbial cake too. Subdivisions built more thoughtfully, agricultural practices and crops better suited to the desert, likewise less thirsty but still attractive home landscaping, an entire Utah culture that’s maybe more water wise but intact. They leaned into what they called the Utah way. Being resourceful vs. draconian. Solving problems together among the people, private enterprise, philanthropy and the government. I’m skeptical seeing the rank stupidity that the giant data center demonstrates — longstanding recklessness with water, visions of profit trumping concern for the lake, holding desperately to destructive habits, however dated. This is a lot of the Utah I am seeing today, a way less than awe inspiring unless we’re talking about a horror movie. But the pioneers at their best showed remarkable resourcefulness when they arrived on the shores of this salty sea. There are yet plenty of signs of that Utah, as well. The living legacy of the 2002 Olympics, which stands out from other hosts that let their infrastructure rust and rot away, for instance. So I believe it can be done. I know Utah will put on a great Games in 2034. Not that this will mean much unless the Salt Lake is great again, too. Don Rogers is the editor and publisher of The Park Record. He can be reached at [email protected] or (970) 376-0745. The post Journalism Matters: A dead Salt Lake would sink Utah appeared first on Park Record. ...read more read less