The Republican candidates vying to represent the congressional district containing the largest portion of the Great Salt Lake split in a debate Monday night on one of the most critical issues affecting voters there — whether Congress should grant President Donald Trump’s request to invest $1 billion in saving the ailing lake.

After a winter in which Utah’s mountains saw record-low snowpack, and as the state experiences hotter-than-average temperatures, some scientists are predicting the Great Salt Lake will shrink to an unprecedented level by the end of the summer.

But state Rep. Karianne Lisonbee, R-Clearfield, who is challenging incumbent U.S. Rep. Blake Moore in Utah’s new 2nd Congressional District, questioned in a debate on PBS Utah if the federal government should step in.

“Water in Utah is a limited resource, and I have some questions around where does the billion dollars come from,” Lisonbee said. “Is that more deficit spending that is going to drive up prices for everyday Utahns for the things that they need?”

Lisonbee, who has served in the Legislature for nearly a decade and referenced her elected position, continued, “We have led out on the water issue. We dedicated money to a trust to be able to make sure that we are prioritizing [water] shares when we can to the Great Salt Lake, but we’re in a prolonged and intense drought cycle right now.”

That’s why Congress needs to send that money to Utah, Moore countered. The congressman pointed to money needed to explore the possibility of maximizing water in the state with desalination, and the cost of removing invasive phragmites to restore the lake’s ecosystem.

“There’s a whole bunch of innovative ideas that a little bit of resource can actually produce a really big result here,” Moore said.

The candidates also weighed in on the hyperscale data center celebrity investor Kevin O’Leary is proposing in Box Elder County, which has drawn national attention to the 2nd District. While both Moore and Lisonbee said the process needed to include more public input, just one took a stance against it moving forward at this stage.

Moore said “there was obviously a dearth of information going out to the public,” and acknowledged the importance of protecting natural resources.

“But we cannot lose this race to China,” Moore said, “because we will do it more responsibly. We will do it with better efficacy, and we will be able to maintain our supreme position on the world stage by embracing and doing it ethically with regards to everything in this AI arms race.”

If “we do this right,” Moore added, Box Elder County can play a role in advancing national prosperity similar to when it hosted the completion of the transcontinental railroad at Promontory Point in 1869.

Lisonbee praised state leaders for announcing in recent days that they would put more guardrails on a possible data center.

But she said the public still does not know enough about what that data center would look like for her to give her endorsement.

“The process matters, and when the public is seeing a rushed process, and there’s many unanswered questions about the impacts on the environment and water, and there’s no impact studies, there’s been no input from the public — that is when elected officials run into problems,” Lisonbee said.

“I am not supportive at this point until the questions are answered,” she concluded.