Can Utah actually save the Great Salt Lake?

No saline lake has ever been rescued. Gov. Spencer Cox is confident his state will be the first to succeed.

- ADDISON GRAHAM GUEST CONTRIBUTOR

RICK BOWMER Associated Press

ONCE-VAST inland seas, including the Great Salt Lake, are receding more each year. Some have disappeared altogether.

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.