Curtis: We Need Pioneer-Scale Ambition to Save the Great Salt Lake

Curtis: We Need Pionee r-Scale Ambition to Save the Great Salt Lake Senator urges Congress, Utah leaders, innovators to adopt big, bold ideas to ensure a healthy Great Salt Lake ecosystem WASHINGTON —U.S. Senator John Curtis (R-UT) took to the Senate Floor to call for bold, long-term thinking to restore the Great Salt Lake, drawing on the state’s pioneer heritage and urging Utah’s engineers, entrepreneurs, universities, policymakers, and technology leaders to pursue innovative solutions alongside continued conservation. Senator Curtis’ remarks as prepared are below, and video can be viewed here . When Utah’s pioneers first arrived in the Salt Lake Valley, they had almost nothing. They had no reservoirs, pipelines, pumps, federal grants, or municipal bonds. Their most sophisticated earth-moving equipment ate hay. What they did have was a problem. There was not enough water where they needed it. So, they moved it. Even before Brigham Young entered the valley in July 1847, members of the advance company diverted City Creek to soften the dry ground and irrigate crops. Within a year, thousands of acres were under irrigation. As settlements grew, Utahns did not simply accept the limits of the streams flowing conveniently past them. They built ditches and canals. They diverted mountain streams. They constructed the Jordan and Salt Lake City Canal, stretching roughly 28 miles across the valley. Eventually, they developed water exchanges, providing farmers with water from Utah Lake and the Jordan River in exchange for higher-quality canyon water that could serve a growing city. There is something important in that history for us today. These were people with picks, shovels, horses, and oxen. They had almost no capital. Yet they were willing to undertake enormous projects because they understood that the limited water available to them at that moment did not have to define the territory’s future. The pioneers were bold. They thought big. We need some of that thinking again. Utah is growing. The West is getting more crowded. We are in a pattern of drought. The Colorado River is under extraordinary pressure. And the Great Salt Lake reminds us that every gallon has competing demands. Conservation has to be part of the answer. Agriculture needs to become increasingly efficient. Cities should reuse water and eliminate unnecessary consumption. We need to be better stewards of the water we already have. But I don’t believe conservation alone is a long-term water strategy for a rapidly growing state. We should also be asking: Where is the next water, and how do we get it? I recently met with a group of experts working on water and the Great Salt Lake. I challenged them to think like the pioneers. What are the big ideas? What are the ideas that sound a little crazy today but might not sound crazy 50 years from now? For purposes of the discussion, I asked them to temporarily take money and even engineering limitations off the table. Before telling me why something couldn’t be done, I wanted to hear what might be possible. The list quickly became long: What about desalination plants on the California coast? Perhaps Utah could help provide the energy needed to produce fresh water for California in exchange for access to more Colorado River water upstream. What about bringing water from wetter parts of the country? What about groundwater beneath the Great Salt Lake? Can we recover water that is currently stranded from the lake? Can we reduce evaporation? Can we develop crops that produce more with less water? Can better forest management help more winter snow actually reach the ground? Some of these ideas may not work. Some will be too expensive. Others may fail because of engineering, environmental, or legal problems. That’s fine. But we should know they don’t work because we took them seriously enough to find out. Utah has done big things before. The Central Utah Project moves Colorado River Basin water across the Wasatch Mountains through a remarkable system of reservoirs, tunnels, aqueducts, and pipelines. It took generations to conceive, finance, and build. Before that came the canals. And before the canals came a ditch from City Creek. We have a tendency to look back at what the pioneers accomplished and romanticize it. We celebrate their courage, put their pictures in museums, and tell their stories every July. I wonder if one of the best ways to honor them is simply to think and act more like they did. Imagine telling a Utah pioneer that constructing a 28-mile canal with picks, shovels, and horse-drawn equipment was too ambitious. Imagine telling them the valley could support only as many people as the existing streams happened to accommodate. They looked at the Utah they had and started building the Utah they wanted their children to inherit. Our challenge is different, but I think our responsibility is much the same. None of this means we should build every project someone can draw on a map. We need good engineering, honest accounting, environmental responsibility, and respect for our neighboring states. We should conserve aggressively before spending enormous amounts of money to create or transport additional water. But we should not assume that today’s water supply is all Utah will ever have. The answer probably isn’t one enormous project. It is more likely a combination of conservation, agricultural efficiency, reuse, watershed restoration,  desalination, better storage, new technology, and perhaps someday bringing additional water into the Colorado River system. And there are probably good ideas we haven’t thought of yet. Utah has an extraordinary collection of engineers, entrepreneurs, capital providers, universities, lawmakers, and technology companies. I would like to see more of us working on this problem. We need our best minds to help us figure out water. Most importantly, we need to think beyond the next legislative session or election cycle. Water projects can take decades. We ought to be thinking 50 and 100 years ahead. The pioneers who diverted City Creek in 1847 could not have imagined millions of people living along the Wasatch Front or a modern Utah economy built around technology, manufacturing, and innovation. Fortunately, they built for more than the Utah they could see. We should too. Our ancestors came to one of the driest places in America and built thriving communities because they were willing to move water where it was needed. Nearly two centuries later, we have resources and technology they could not have imagined. We could use a little more of their ambition and dreaming. When Utahns look back at us 100 years from now, I hope they will say that we didn’t just manage the water problems we inherited. We started building the solutions they needed. Background: Utah is one of the fastest-growing states in the country, placing increasing pressure on limited water supplies and aging infrastructure. The Great Salt Lake has also faced historically low water levels as drought, warmer temperatures, and upstream water use reduce the amount of water reaching the lake. At the same time, communities across Utah need continued investment in water storage, treatment, conveyance, and reuse infrastructure to accommodate growth, improve resilience, and make better use of existing supplies. In August, Curtis convened a group of experts—including state elected officials, water experts, researchers, conservation leaders, and members of Utah’s technology sector—for a roundtable discussion on bold, long-term solutions to strengthen Utah’s water supply and protect the Great Salt Lake. Senator Curtis has worked to strengthen Utah’s long-term water security through investments in water recycling, drinking water infrastructure, and drought resilience. He has also emphasized locally driven solutions for the Great Salt Lake that bring together federal, state, local, agricultural, and conservation partners while protecting Utah’s ability to grow.