'A team effort': EPA head backs $1B budget request after touring Great Salt Lake

Estimated read time: 4-5 minutes

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin is pushing for $1 billion from Congress to help save the Great Salt Lake.
• Zeldin toured Farmington Bay with Utah officials, observing low water levels after poor snowpack.
• Zeldin emphasized the lake's national significance, backed goals of restoring water levels ahead of 2034 Olympics.

FARMINGTON — The impact of Utah's record-low snowpack is already being felt at the Great Salt Lake's Farmington Bay, where water levels are well below normal and just a few inches deep in some places.

Lee Zeldin, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, joined several Utah politicians and state officials for an airboat tour of the bay Saturday to learn more about efforts to boost flagging lake levels and prevent the potentially harmful effects if the lake continues to dry.

Officials piled into several boats near the Farmington Bay Waterfowl Management Area for the tour around the bay.

Life jackets aren't needed — "If you fall in, just stand up," state Department of Environmental Quality officials tell those embarking.

The water is only 2- to- 3 inches deep through much of the brief cruise, and the muddy lake bed can be seen clearly from the seats in the boats, even as they glide over the surface at close to 40 mph.

A typical spring would see about a foot of water in this part of the lake, and officials say a healthy lake would have several feet. But with a measly peak of 8.3 inches of snow water equivalent over the winter, Farmington Bay is at levels typically seen in July after several months of evaporation, according to one official.

But despite the diminished water level, Utah Sen. John Curtis said he was proud to show off the beauty of the lake to Zeldin, as state and federal officials look at ways to ensure the long-term health of the Great Salt Lake.

"It's hard to be out there without realizing the beauty of the lake," Curtis, a Republican, told KSL after the tour. "Sometimes the lake has a reputation of salty and brine and smelly, but today we were able to show off a beautiful lake to the administrator. ... It's always valuable for somebody like that to see just how great we have it here."

Zeldin represents an administration that has taken an interest in the health of the Great Salt Lake. President Donald Trump has asked Congress for $1 billion to enhance infrastructure, improve water flow and remove invasive species from the lake.

"This is such an important issue, not just for all of you in Utah, but ... this is a national issue. This is an international issue," he said. "With the Olympics coming up in 2034, what an important goal that Gov. (Spencer) Cox has to make sure that the elevation is restored in time for the Olympics, when once again this region is going to be back on the world stage in such a special way."

"This has been a team effort," he added.

Zeldin was accompanied on the tour by several other Republican members of Utah's federal delegation, including Reps. Blake Moore, Celeste Maloy and Mike Kennedy, as well as Utah Senate President Stuart Adams, R-Layton.

All pledged to work collaboratively to protect the lake, and expressed optimism that the lake's continued demise isn't a foregone conclusion. Kennedy said Trump's budget request is "entirely merited," and Moore said he and his fellow lawmakers in Congress trust that Utah would handle any federal money for the lake "with absolute respect and transparency and effectiveness."

"Salt Lake City and the Great Salt Lake are linked, obviously, by name," Kennedy said. "We do not want the Great Salt Lake to turn into the Salt Flats. We'll have to call Salt Lake City 'Salt Flat City,' and I'm not invested in that. That name change would be very expensive and not worth it. We need this lake."

Zeldin said his agency is ready to help state officials but said it would "take quite a lot of nerve" for the EPA to tell Utah leaders how to address the problems.

"Those conversations with a PowerPoint presentation don't do justice when you come and you see for yourself, to see water that is shallow while being informed of how the goal is for the water level at that location to be 6 feet higher in elevation by the time we get to the Olympics," he said.

The $1 billion dollars Trump asked for still has to be approved by Congress, but Zeldin and Utah's elected leaders were bullish on getting the funding.

"I feel very optimistic," Curtis said. "We've had a lot of conversations, and we continue to lay the groundwork, particularly with the appropriate committees and the appropriations folks to make sure that they understand exactly how the money would be used and that it would be used well."

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The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.

Related topics

Utah congressional delegationGreat Salt LakeUtahPoliticsOutdoorsEnvironment

Bridger Beal-Cvetko

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Bridger Beal-Cvetko is a reporter for KSL. He covers politics, Salt Lake County communities and breaking news. Bridger has worked for the Deseret News and graduated from Utah Valley University.