President Donald Trump pledged in posts and remarks made Saturday to help Utah save its drying Great Salt Lake. But the president offered no details as to what aid might look like to address one of the Beehive State’s most pressing challenges.
Several hours after Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social that he will work with Utah to make the ailing lake “GREAT AGAIN,” the president told governors at a dinner, “That is what I call a real environmental problem.”
“Saving the Great Salt Lake,” Trump continued, directing his comments to Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, “that’s what we’re going to be doing, OK? So this was a good trip for you, governor.”
As Cox — who met with Trump over the weekend — and other Utah leaders spoke with reporters Monday, they gave more insight into Utah’s bid to attract assistance from the White House.
“I told [Trump] that it’s going to take funding to help us save the Great Salt Lake,” Cox said. “He didn’t flinch at that at all — said that he could be supportive of helping us secure the funding that we need, and we’re going to come back to him with a proposal."
Utah will draft its proposal over the next few months, Cox said. The number that Cox floated with Trump, he confirmed, was $1 billion.
Any figure would likely require congressional approval, a hurdle Cox said he’s confident Utah’s federal delegation and the White House would help clear.
“This is not just the environmental left who’s interested in saving the lake, it’s the MAGA right as well,“ Cox told reporters. ”So all of us across the political spectrum know how important this is and that gives me hope that we can get something done."
Trump’s signal of support comes as Utah faces the consequences of a record-low snowpack, which raises the likelihood of the lake’s elevation hitting record lows.
Some of the projects federal money could fund include water desalination in the region, or pipelines to route water from wetter states to Utah, legislative leaders said.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom recently expressed support for an idea Cox pitched to trade Colorado River water shares for money for desalination plants.
“For President Trump to come out and say, ‘Let’s do something,’ I think that opens the door to a number of possibilities to augment our water supply here in the state,” said state Sen. Scott Sandall, R-Tremonton.
House Speaker Mike Schultz, R-Hooper, praised Cox for turning Trump’s attention to the lake, noting, “Several of us have been asking President Trump to engage on this issue for over two months now.”
Utah’s Republican leaders all agree that a long-term solution to a shrinking lake requires the help of the federal government.
“This is not going to be solved within the boundaries of Utah,” said Senate President Stuart Adams, R-Layton, with Sandall adding, “The solution simply can’t be that we turn off all the faucets and we all move out of here so that all the water can go to the lake.”