John Curtis

Sen. John Curtis said all ideas should be on the table when it comes to saving the Great Salt Lake during the Sutherland Institute’s 2026 Congressional Series at the Hinkley Institute of Politics on Monday. The problem doesn’t come down to one issue — not just data centers, climate change or bad policy — according to Curtis. So the answer won’t come from fixing one area either. “We’re all part of this together, right?” he said. “If you single out any group, you’re just going to make them an enemy in the cause. We need everybody on the team.” The Great Salt Lake sat at 4.190 feet on Monday — only about two feet above the record low. About 800 square miles of lakebed are exposed, and every foot of elevation dropped exposes about 70 more square miles. “You can’t ignore the Great Salt Lake in a very large ecosystem,” Curtis said. “All of these systems are tied together and if one’s not healthy, then the ecosystem’s not healthy.” A University of Utah study of the state’s winter rain found that lake-effect storms — when cold air picks up moisture from the Great Salt Lake and dumps it as snow along the Wasatch — account for roughly 8% of the winter precipitation. That area includes the Cottonwood canyons resorts like Alta, Snowbird, Brighton, and Solitude, which means a dried-up Great Salt Lake could mean less snow, and less winter tourism revenue for the state. ‘We have to change the math’ “There is not enough water,” said Curtis. “Even with conservation, there is just not enough water. So we have to change the math. “Well, how do you change the math? You do something dramatic.” Curtis explained a realistic solution for solving the math equation involves contributions from a little bit of everyone — including reengineering the infrastructure of the lake. During a high-water period in the 1980s, water flowed around the Newfoundland Basin and became trapped in dikes and berms (raised areas to trap water in an effort to avoid flooding). Great Salt Lake Commissioner Hannah Freeze told the Deseret News in a previous interview that recent aerial surveys show water still pools in those areas today — which evaporates, leading to more water loss. Great Salt Lake commissioner lays out 5 ways to use Trump’s proposed $1B — if Congress approves it Curtis said it’s time for another infrastructure investment. “It’s also time for some rethinking of what that structure is, how that infrastructure works, and maybe changing some paradigms about what will work and what will not work when it comes to water,” he added. Freeze plans to implement engineering solutions to the Newfoundland Basin to capture the trapped water and channel it back to the lake — reverse engineering the pumps. “Some of the estimates for the Newfoundland Basin could (add) 30,000 to 60,000 additional acre-feet every year depending on the hydrology,” she said. “That would be a big chunk of water.” Another solution Curtis referred to was valuing the water the state has left. He called the water price in