Lee Zeldin, the Environmental Protection Agency administrator, toured the Great Salt Lake’s Farmington Bay by airboat on May 23 with several Utah lawmakers and state officials, seeing water that was only 2 to 3 inches deep through much of the trip. Officials said a typical spring would put about a foot of water there, while a healthy lake would have several feet.
The tour put a stark image to a problem Utah leaders have been pressing in Washington: a lake so low that the shoreline looks more like a shallow marsh than a body of water. Zeldin was joined by Reps. Blake Moore, Celeste Maloy and Mike Kennedy, along with Utah Senate President Stuart Adams, as the state argued for federal help and tried to keep the lake on track for the 2034 Olympics.
Zeldin called the Great Salt Lake issue a national and international one and said, “This has been a team effort.” He also said the goal is to restore the lake’s elevation in time for the 2034 Games, when Utah hopes to present the region to the world with a healthier lake. President Donald Trump has asked Congress for $1 billion to enhance infrastructure, improve water flow and remove invasive species tied to the lake’s recovery.
The winter did little to ease the pressure. Utah’s peak snow water equivalent reached 8.3 inches, leaving officials with little cushion after another dry season. On the airboat, Republican Rep. John Curtis said, “It’s hard to be out there without realizing the beauty of the lake,” while Kennedy said Trump’s budget request is “entirely merited.” Moore said Utah would handle any federal money “with absolute respect and transparency and effectiveness.”
The lake trip came as the broader fight over Utah’s water future was widening. A couple of days before a televised report on Zeldin’s visit, a legislative committee voted to study data center impacts, and state regulators are set to review the Stratos data center planned for Box Elder County before any state permits are issued. The project has drawn bipartisan concern and protest at the Capitol, where Deeda Seed led demonstrators against it.
Zeldin later appeared before hundreds of energy leaders at Gov. Spencer Cox’s Operation Gigawatt Summit in Deer Valley, where he declined to directly answer whether data centers conflict with Trump’s pledge to save the Great Salt Lake. “I’m not coming here today to opine and place judgment like that,” he said, adding that he had seen data centers elsewhere do “an awesome job of water reuse” and “an awesome job with the energy supply.”
That same debate has now reached federal policy. Nearly two weeks before the report, the EPA said in a news release that Americans may be able to start building non-emitting components or structures for essential power generation, data centers and manufacturing before obtaining a major New Source Review permit if the proposal is finalized as written. For Utah, the question is no longer whether the lake is in trouble. It is whether Washington’s money, the state’s regulators and the region’s fast-growing industrial buildout can all be reconciled before the next deadline comes into view.
