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At its peak, Great Salt Lake, located right outside the state’s capital of Salt Lake City, was bigger than the state of Delaware, covering roughly 2,300 square miles, with a thriving ecosystem and the main reason Utah claimed to have “the greatest snow on Earth.” Now, due to a severe water shortage caused by excessive water consumption and lackluster winters, the lake is a shadow of what it once was.
It’s been labeled Utah’s “environmental nuclear bomb” and it has the attention of the president of the United States.
“Very important to save The Great Salt Lake in Utah. This is an Environmental hazard that must be worked on, IMMEDIATELY — It is of tremendous interest to me,” Trump wrote on Feb. 21 on Truth Social.
He ended the post with a twist on his trademark slogan, “MAKE ‘THE LAKE’ GREAT AGAIN!”
But a man from New York City didn’t conveniently stumble upon a big, dying, salty lake located in the arid mountain west. The issue landed in front of Trump because someone in his inner circle gave him a nudge, which led to a meeting and the chance to do something no country has ever accomplished – the successful restoration of a terminal saline lake.
The survival of the lake – the largest of its kind in the Western Hemisphere – has been a priority for Utah leaders over the last several years. But they knew it couldn’t conquer the colossal task on its own. That’s why Utah, a state that prides itself on sovereignty and small-government, is seeking federal help to revive a landmark that is culturally, environmentally and economically vital to the region.
“If we are able to pull off this saline lake rescue, it will truly be a world first,” said Ben Abbott, an ecology professor at Brigham Young University.
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The meeting
Utah’s Republican Gov. Spencer Cox walked into the White House on a Monday in late February with a pitch to the president: join Utah in the fight to save Great Salt Lake.
The day before Cox hopped on a plane to Washington D.C. for the National Governors Association conference and White House dinner, he received a phone call, said Joel Ferry, executive director of the Utah division of national resources.
“He got a call from the White House saying, ‘Hey, President Trump would like to meet with you and a few other governors. Bring a couple of your top issues you guys can discuss,'” said Ferry. Ferry wasn’t at the meeting but as one of Cox’s closest advisors on the lake, he helped the governor prepare the pitch to the president.
It was a monumental moment for the state of Utah. Cox brought the problem of Great Salt Lake to the president’s doorstep.
What was once water lies more than a thousand square miles of exposed lakebed. The parched playa is filled with heavy metals and toxins, such as arsenic, that pose serious respiratory health risks to approximately 2.5 million people. The toxic dust floats to neighboring states, such as Wyoming and Idaho during strong wind events. It’s a primary source of fertilizer used to grow tree nuts. Critical minerals, such as lithium and magnesium are mined from the lake.
Its salty waters also hold up to 50% of the world’s brine shrimp supply, which is the primary protein source for the farmed fish and shrimp consumed at restaurants and home dining tables globally. Millions of migratory birds pay a visit to Great Salt Lake every year and it supports an entire ecosystem that has been on the precipice of collapse for years because it fails to maintain adequate water levels.
The lake’s primary water source comes from Utah’s snowpack. During bad snow years – and 2026 was Utah’s worst snowfall on record – the lake suffers more. Water from the three main tributaries that feed into Great Salt Lake is often diverted for other purposes before it ever makes its way to the lake.
“For the past two years now, we’ve been working on a federal ask,” said Abbott. The BYU professor studies saline lakes and is also the director of Grow the Flow, an advocacy organization centered around water conservation and shepherding water to Great Salt Lake.
Environmental stewardship isn’t something Trump campaigned on so those lobbying for the lake knew they needed another way to appeal to the president.
Since returning to office, Trump has stripped billions of dollars in climate research, rolled back environmental regulations on emissions, incentivized companies to ditch renewable energy projects and has canceled billions of dollars in approved funding for clean energy projects. He’s called climate change a “hoax” and frequently touts the U.S. is flushed with oil thanks to the “drill baby drill” mindset.
Trump didn’t invite Cox inside his home on his own volition. One friend to the president got the ball rolling – Mark Burnett.
The former executive producer of NBC’s The Apprentice, the reality TV show starring Trump, is now special envoy of the United Kingdom under the Trump administration. And he is a Great Salt Lake fan. He is a Utah transplant, a board member of Grow the Flow and involved in various other organizations focused on saving Great Salt Lake.
“So Mark and others have been talking with the federal government about the need for this coordination,” Abbott said.
While Abbott tips his hat to Burnett for starting the conversation, Cox is the one who laid out the specifics to Trump in-person about why he should invest in the lake.
Cox declined NPR’s interview request but Ferry is one of the people who prepped the governor ahead of the meeting. Though, Ferry says Cox didn’t need much prepping. Great Salt Lake is an issue Utah leaders have been working to resuscitate for nearly a decade; Cox knew the talking points.
“It was really just telling the story,” Ferry said, “It’s the largest lake west of the Mississippi. And it is in decline. It is disappearing. It is something that we can, if we put enough resources towards it and we do enough, we can change the trajectory.”
From Ferry’s perspective, the message resonated with Trump. The meeting, Ferry said, was originally scheduled for fifteen minutes. It lasted an hour and half. Trump made a commitment in that meeting, Ferry said, to make history.
Then, at the Feb. 21 White House dinner with governors, Trump pointed at Cox and reiterated the promise he made.
“We’re going to save it. We’re not going to let that go. That is what I call an environment, a real environmental problem,” Trump told the audience.
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The Trump effect
Since the initial meeting, Trump has made three mentions of the lake on social media. The most recent one, posted on March 10, declared he is the only one who can make it happen.
“I am also saving The Great Salt Lake, in Utah, which, in a short period of time, if nothing is done, will have no water. This is on top of everything else I am doing. Only ‘TRUMP’ CAN DO IT!,” he wrote.
To stop the lake’s decline and begin recovery, Abbott, the ecologist, said Great Salt Lake needs between 500,000 to 800,000 acre feet of water every year. If the goal is to return Great Salt Lake to what it once was, especially before Utah welcomes the world back for the 2034 Winter Olympic Games, Abbott estimates around one million acre feet of water annually must go to the lake.
“It’s an enormous amount of water,” Abbott said. “I don’t know what political approach we need, except that it’s got to be bold. It’s got to be adaptive. We’ve got to try something new. And we’ve got to disrupt the status quo.”
It’ll also be very expensive. So Utah leaders are capitalizing on a Republican president in the White House and a narrow majority in Congress to hopefully get a huge budget request across the finish line. Cox told Utah reporters in February that he asked for one billion dollars in federal funds to help get water to the lake.
When Cox posed the figure, he said Trump “didn’t flinch at all.”
While Utah leaders have been strategizing how to get federal funding for years, they were successful this time around thanks to creative lobbying. The president’s 2027 fiscal budget – which seeks cuts in many areas such as health care and other environmental priorities – includes the full $1 billion funding request for Great Salt Lake.
Congress, of course, will have the final say.
