Gordon Monson: If the Great Salt Lake dies, Missouri may be Latter-day Saints’ Zion and savior

The subject here is of utmost concern. Pay attention to it. If you already are, good on you.

It’s a six-way mashup, really, a mix of government, religion, nature, finances, survival and you. It will affect everyone around here — or at least it could — who has an interest in any of those things or, in many cases, all of them.

It can be wrapped into one significant question: Is it time to get out of Dodge? And by Dodge, we mean Salt Lake City and its surrounding communities.

That’s right, one day we’re wondering whether Utah’s capital can land a Major League Baseball franchise and the next, we’re neck deep in worry over whether this place is about to become the surface of the moon.

Enough of the vagaries. Let’s get to it.

You may have heard that the Great Salt Lake isn’t so great anymore. Not so great in a couple of ways. First, it’s shrinking. And second, as it shrinks, it might just kill us all. That’s not me being overly dramatic or a sad-sack pessimist. It’s me reading what scientists — women and men with big brains who study such stuff — say will happen if the water that feeds into the lake dries up and residents decide to stick around, come what may.

In simple terms, as the lake dries, it leaves behind toxic elements that get stirred up by the wind, and, as they go airborne, they choke off humans and most other forms of life that breathe in those elements. It’s happened to other lakes in other regions, and it can happen here.

It doesn’t get any more urgent than that.

If this matter isn’t properly addressed, we move or we die.

If it is properly addressed, we live happily on, as we work our jobs, vote for close-minded politicians, recreate in our natural wonders, ski our mountains, boat on our lakes, bike and hike our trails, and rejoice as our real estate values, if we’re fortunate enough to own a home, continue to climb.

Up with hope, down with choke.

Show me the way to the Show Me State

Utah’s population is growing because a lot of people want to live here. Nobody wants to die here. If the problem isn’t solved, and the air becomes poisonous, what will home values be? If your retirement funds are tied to the equity you have in your house and your house’s value plunges to the subterranean level it would rest at if it were located on Uranus, kiss your investment and your financial security goodbye. I wonder if some folks already have bolted to another location, given this possibility, however distant.

This is where the religion angle comes in. It has long been a part of Latter-day Saint lore that while The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is headquartered in Salt Lake City, this is not Zion. Well, this is not Zion Zion. This is not where the Saints — not all of them, anyway — will ultimately gather for the Second Coming. No, Zion will be built, it is said, in Missouri.

What do you figure will prompt an organization with deep ties, deep roots and deeper investments in Utah — with shopping malls and buildings and businesses and landholdings and chapels and temples and universities and all sorts of other properties and interests here — to up and leave for Independence, Mo.?

How about if Brigham Young’s right place were to become the wrong place? If, to live here and work here, you’d have to wear a space mask on your face and an air tank on your back to breathe? That might prompt a massive move.

On the other hand, the church has been selling off thousands of acres in Missouri of late. And don’t think those transactions haven’t caught the attention of orthodox Latter-day Saints who know full well about the prophecies regarding Zion being built in the Show Me State and that a day will come when a major body of Saints will be asked to move there. On the other hand, those folks also know their church still has thousands and thousands of acres in and around Independence, and they believe the time will come for some “reverse pioneers” to go east.

Many of them would rather everything and everyone, including themselves, stay right where they are, in the beautiful mountains and valleys around Salt Lake City, where housing is expensive, where homelessness persists, where the politics are a little weird and more than a little lopsided, where a single church is powerful enough to dictate public policy, where wintertime inversions already are enough to gag a toad, where the liquor laws are what they are, where women are paid less than men for equal work, and where the city’s pro basketball team never wins a championship.

Those are serious issues, but they’re our serious issues. This is home.

Utah, we love thee

So government leaders and those they lead need to do what’s necessary to save the lake, save the city, save all the cities, save Utah, save our homes, save all of us. They and we might be tempted to rely on nature to provide large amounts of precipitation, as happened this past year, when snow levels throttled up. But that would be a mistake. You can’t trust nature, not on a deal as important and dire as this one.

What should we do? What should leaders do? It goes beyond turning off the faucet while we brush our teeth, while we soap up in the shower, while we wash fruits and vegetables in our kitchen sinks, beyond letting our lawns dry up. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has implemented some policies to slow the flow. Some businesses and residents have joined the fight. What more needs to be rearranged before it’s too late?

Officials have commissioned studies on this, so now it’s a matter of whether they have the money and the resolve to implement best practices: Conserve water usage by way of legislation, limit development in certain areas until water uses and waste can be solved, stop farmers from siphoning off half the state’s water into their alfalfa fields so they can sell their product to China and make bank.

Something, many things, all things that must be done.

The ultimate Zion might be destined for somebody else’s state, somebody else’s town, but, whether you’re a believer or a nonbeliever, let’s keep the Utah one, such as it is, for as long as we can. That Zion back there can wait for as long as we can save this Zion’s lake and breathe this Zion’s air.

To borrow a tattered phrase that, for whatever reason, a lot of Utahns seem to favor: Make the Lake Great Again.