My team huddled together, stunned, as we stared at the photo our rowing coach had just texted us. It showed a place we knew well — our crew team’s marina at Great Salt Lake, where we’d launched boats every afternoon just six months earlier. The water in the marina had completely evaporated.

Our boats lay stranded on a dry lakebed, surrounded by dirt instead of water.

Our team’s group chat exploded. Where could we practice? Was the season over? We worried our team would vanish with the lake’s water.

For many Utahns, Great Salt Lake’s decline feels distant. It shows up as a news headline or a dust storm blowing across the Wasatch Front. But as a member of Utah Crew, a rowing team that has trained on the lake for years, I’ve witnessed its collapse in a way few others have. If Great Salt Lake keeps receding, our season will disappear, too.

Our marina dried up during my first season in fall 2022 — the same year the lake reached its historic low. Utah Crew scrambled to find ways to train. We shifted to rowing machines and waited for enough water to appear in the Surplus Canal so we could practice there instead. We had to wait a long time.

After two strong winters, we were able to row on the lake for part of last year. But now, with lake levels trending back toward their all-time low, we are back where we were in 2022. Our coach has informed us that we will not row on the lake this spring season.

Protecting Great Salt Lake is crucial for the future of rowing in Utah. Utah Crew’s training season depends on Great Salt Lake’s water levels. Like the truncated ski season, the lake’s collapse has shortened our rowing season, limiting the time we can train. Our team is already small and will struggle to recruit new rowers as our training schedule becomes more unpredictable.

Although Utah Crew is a club team with aging equipment, our rowers are dedicated, and we have sent recruited athletes to Division 1 teams at universities like UCLA, MIT and Harvard. We are the only team in Utah that welcomes members from any high school. Our financial aid program makes rowing accessible to everyone, challenging the sport’s reputation for elitism.

I hope to someday be recruited as a D1 rower. But if Great Salt Lake’s water levels continue to fall, my teammates and I will have nowhere to train, and future Utahns will miss out on any chance to row.

Great Salt Lake isn’t only important to rowers — it’s vital to all Utah athletes. The lake is responsible for up to 10% of the snowpack in the Cottonwood Canyons, extending our ski season by a month and a half. The Great Salt Lake Effect, where cold air blows over the lake’s surface and crystallizes into snow over the Wasatch Mountains, is what makes Utah’s powder the “greatest snow on Earth.”

If you’ve skied or snowboarded here, you have benefited from Great Salt Lake.

Great Salt Lake is not alone in its struggles. There are 120 major saline lakes around the world. Not a single one has been fully restored. Great Salt Lake can be the first, but it will take all of us.

Lawmakers have made meaningful progress, including during this past session, where they passed new funding and legal reforms and pledged to coordinate with the federal government to restore the lake. That deserves recognition. Still, a single session cannot save the lake. Next year, Utah’s lawmakers must go further — allocate more money and ensure saved water reaches the lake.

Utah lawmakers must also work with major water users to conserve and dedicate water to Great Salt Lake. This includes regulations and compromises with Utah’s agricultural community, which depletes 65% of the water that would otherwise reach the lake.

A recent study found that municipal and industrial water use, primarily on lawns, causes 26.8% of the lake’s depletion. This means everyday choices matter. Utahns can start at home — water lawns less and take advantage of landscape incentive programs. Talk about the lake with neighbors and vote for candidates who support the lake.

In 2034 and beyond, we want people from around the world to have the chance to experience the Greatest Snow on Earth. Utah Crew wants to train on our home lake and give future generations of Utahns the opportunity to fall in love with rowing as we have.

Although I won’t be able to row from Utah Crew’s marina this year, I have hope that our state’s leaders will listen — and act — so our team can row on Great Salt Lake once more.

Katherine Parker is a varsity rower for Utah Crew and a sophomore at West High School, where she serves as co-editor-in-chief of the school newspaper, The Red and Black.

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