Whatever collaborating powers that can make it happen, The Lake documentary, which has received a full-bodied positive response at its Sundance premiere, should be made available for viewing by every single Utahn, including the 104 members of the Utah Legislature’s two chambers.
Directed by Abby Ellis, the film approaches the Great Salt Lake’s existential crisis, by illuminating the stakes and premises for effective leadership, along with the tasks of building consensus in the political will for urgent comprehensive action. The Lake makes apparent that Utah will need New Deal levels of spending to address the challenges of reclamation and renewables for all the stakeholders, if the lake is to be rescued from a total collapse that could occur as early as before the end of the current decade.
The film makes two points clearly. First, never before has a saline lake been rescued in the world. Second, the investment to rescue it will certainly be in the billions. According to a peer-reviewed article published last April in the Environmental Challenges journal, an independent cost analysis estimates that rescuing the lake will entail between $2 billion and $5 billion over the next decade, an enormous sum for a state that is the 30th most populous in the country. Most Utah legislative appropriations for mitigating measures to date have been a fraction of that, often $1 million at most and usually amounts much lower to make anything more than a symbolic impact.
Without necessarily explicating it fully, Ellis’ documentary nevertheless spotlights the political challenge of building a multi-partisan consensus. Offering a perhaps too generous, yet still significant, portrayal of Utah Governor Spencer Cox and his gradual coming to terms with the lake’s existential emergency, Ellis crafts an instructive case study of political leadership during a time when judicious temperament and the prudence of listening to facts and evidence are difficult to find in today’s America.
While one should always be skeptical about the earnestness of any utterance by a politician, Cox’s appearance in the film is important for at least two major reasons. First, he has a farm in Fairview and in a local broadcast interview last June, he indicated that he has switched from flood irrigation to pressurized irrigation for water conservation purposes. While he does not support the practice of fallowing, the governor said he supports offering grants that help farmers and ranchers adopt efficacious technologies to grow crops with less water, a move that the Great Salt Lake Collaborative has seen as productive for the cause.
Second, the fact that the governor also is the state’s highest ranking elected official who happens to be a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints figures in the documentary’s most surprising treatment of the virtue of faith. For instance, Cox was criticized by the Freedom from Religion Foundation for his show of government piety when he proclaimed June 29, 2025 as a day to pray for rain.
The thematic discourse of faith is unique in environmental docs. Ellis offers scenes of farmers and ranchers who prefer to leave it to the wisdom of faith rather than see their livelihoods compromised by politicians and scientists. But two of the three prominently featured scientists in the film, Brian Steed and Ben Abbott, also are active LDS members (in a talkback after the Salt Lake City screening, scientist Bonnie Baxter humorously mentioned that she was the only non-LDS subject of the film on stage).
In one scene, Steed, who is the state’s Great Salt Lake Commissioner, is seen at the Salt Lake City International Airport welcoming his son home from his LDS mission. Abbott is seen leading his children during prayers. Abbott explains faith as an opportunity for individuals to show their genuine grace for divine Providence by acting accordingly. Never letting their eye off the essential ball in the challenge to save the Great Salt Lake, the scientists in the documentary seem to acknowledge that whatever elitist politics environmentalists have practiced in the past perhaps have been more socially destructive than helpful to their causes.
At this precarious moment, the efforts of faith and piety are not idle assertions. To wit: last November, Gérald Caussé, recently elevated to one of the LDS apostles, said in a speech at Brigham Young University, “The declining levels of the Great Salt Lake pose significant risks to our community’s health, ecosystems, and economy.” He also outlined what the church had accomplished in water conservation efforts, as noted in a post at the Grow The Flow website.
In 2023, the Church donated water shares equivalent to more than 20,000 acre-feet of water, delivered annually and in perpetuity, to Great Salt Lake through the Great Salt Lake Watershed Enhancement Trust. The agreement marked the largest single water donation in Utah’s history. Then, in September of this year, the Church announced another donation—a 10-year lease of up to 7,400 acre-feet of water annually.
Caussé noted that the Church is also updating its facilities in arid and semi-arid climates around the world, through landscaping with native plants and installing smart irrigation systems. The initiatives are expected to save 500 million gallons of water annually.
Ellis grasps the scientific impacts with proper clarity and urgency. The implications of winds transporting toxic and carcinogenic dust, which could affect millions not just along the Wasatch Front but also in other parts of the state, are thoroughly explained. In fact, one envisions a grassroots movement of mothers, fathers and families demanding action to reduce and eliminate such apocalyptic scenarios where such dust events could imperil the health of so many. As Ellis noted in her director’s statement, “We tried to tell this environmental story differently. We injected elements of the horror genre because films about environmental collapse are, at their core, stories of horror. We leaned into this truth to give the film an edge, making the dread as palpable as the beauty.”
Another element addresses efforts to list the Wilson’s phalarope on the Endangered Species list for Federal protection. The small shorebird is seen by many scientists and environmental advocates as the canary in the coal mine with the Great Salt Lake. In the film, Steed is concerned that Abbott’s advocacy for the petition might compromise his objectivity at a crucial time when his expertise matters in politically engaging efforts to rescue the lake. A public servant who has served in many roles, Steed knows how to navigate the trickiest political waters in the state. There is a strong sense of personal and professional brotherhood in the relationship between Abbott and Steed.
Late last week, the Wilson’s phalarope petition was advanced by the U.S. Department of the Interior to the next stage of evaluation, noting that the listing may be warranted. Should the shorebird be designated as an endangered species, Federal protection would entail stricter controls in the state’s water conservation efforts. Furthermore, any water users who would harm the bird, even if unintentionally, could be subject to fines or imprisonment.
Such news could push the state’s efforts to rescue the lake. However, as a packed house in the Jeanné Wagner Theatre in downtown Salt Lake City gave a standing ovation to Ellis, the governor, Abbott, Baxter and Steed, several Utah House members advanced HB 60 to the next step in the legislative process (its third reading on the House calendar). The bill would strip out language from current Utah law which requires Utah’s chief water rights officer, the State Engineer, from having to weigh the environmental merits on a broader impact scale when considering proposed water projects such as Bear River Development.
By limiting who could protest a project involving water diversion or use of water upstream (which is defined in the bill as ‘a particularized injury’), if passed, HB 60 would mean that no one could raise objections against a project, by claiming, for example, that the impact could heighten the likelihood of wind-borne toxic dust reaching the broader and wider population. The bill, if enacted, would apply to all bodies of water on the state’s sovereign lands, including the Great Salt Lake, as well as Bear Lake, Utah Lake, and portions of the Bear River, Colorado River, Green River and Jordan River.
HB 60 would certainly rebuke the value of Cox’s promise in the post-screening talkback that the legislature was committed to doing “great things for the lake.” Ellis strikes a cautiously hopeful tone in The Lake, especially in showing that Governor Cox grasps the profound gravity of the moment. Yet, one cannot avoid realizing how fragile this sounds, from a political vantage.
Political courage— a metaphorically endangered species in the public policy arena — is essential, if serious efforts to rescue the lake can proceed. Earlier this month, the Deseret News reported on results of a Morning Consult poll that asked Utahns if they trust what politicians say. Slightly more than half of respondents indicated they trust what elected officials say at least some of the time, compared to 45% who say they trust them rarely or never.
When asked specifically about the Governor, the results showed that at least 60% of them trusted what he said at least some of the time, and a similar trend was found when Utahns were asked about the extent to which they trusted what President Trump said.
Can we trust our leaders to act accordingly on what is Utah’s greatest environmental crisis in its history? As the same Deseret News report cited, the Pew Research Center, concluded, “The shares saying they can trust the government always or most of the time have never been higher than 30% since 2007.”
Indeed, one of Ellis’s wisest creative choices in the film is the permeation of religious faith and commitment which suggests we could still build the right bridge, for the sake of the lake’s survival. However, the luxury of time is not on our side. Further delays have to be out of the question.
With its many moments of brutal honesty, The Lake documentary should galvanize us to inundate the landscape with calls and grassroots efforts to persuade elected officials to act responsibly and urgently.
There are two conceivable sequels to The Lake: one is a dark post-mortem on a dead saline lake located amidst the largest concentration of population that any such lake has been surrounded by, while the other would be a remarkable unprecedented testimony about how everyone found the will to rescue a lake before an obituary about it could be penned. It could be a model for dealing with other environmental challenges. We cannot afford to ignore the opportunity The Lake illuminates.
The documentary is one of three Sundance films this year which is supported by the Utah Film Center’s fiscal sponsorship program.