Suburban development is spreading like a cancer west of Utah Lake. That sucking sound you hear is the uncontrolled drain on the financial and water resources of the state if Utah County and other local governments do not adopt smart growth policies for this burgeoning area.

The choice is not between growth and no growth. Rather, the choice is between smart growth and sprawl. So far, it's all been sprawl.

The unfettered explosion of Saratoga Springs and Eagle Mountain already have created a highway bottleneck in Lehi, and the Utah Department of Transportation's plans to mitigate that congestion, at great cost, have caused heated debates. That's just a preview of life to come if population projections of 500,000 people west of the lake in the next 30 to 40 years pan out.

Geography is destiny. Utah Lake divides the county in half, and if those masses who are projected to put down stakes in the western county plan to commute to the Wasatch Front daily to work, there are only two choke points at the north and south ends of the lake through which they can pass.

Which explains why the Mountainland Association of Governments, in its West Lake visioning process, is proposing two bridges across the lake. But the history of causeways on the Great Salt Lake, whose sediments undoubtedly resemble those of Utah Lake, suggests that bridges could be a troublesome proposition, in terms both of engineering and ecology. Not to mention expensive.

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Then there are the Lakeside Mountains, which further isolate Cedar Valley from the rest of the county. MAG is projecting a system of freeways that would connect the valley to the rest of the state's transportation grid for a cool $6 billion. That does not include the cost of Utah Lake bridges.

If, by contrast, the area west of the lake were to develop as self-contained communities where people work close to where they live or use public transportation, the costs might be entirely different. That is the essence of smart growth.

So far, however, with the 22,000 folks of Eagle Mountain in Cedar Valley, what we are seeing is commuters traveling long distances to work on the Wasatch Front. That model is financially and environmentally unsustainable. It would make far more sense to encourage population growth in western Salt Lake County than off in the isolation west of Utah Lake.

If the area west of the lake must be further developed, smart growth and impact fees to finance infrastructure should be the template.