When it comes to Utah Lake, opinions seem to rarely line up neatly.

Local cities are asking residents to weigh in on the future of Utah Lake, but if Thursday evening was any indication, consensus will be elusive.

Local opinion lined up for and against a Utah Lake causeway, and remained equally divided on dredging the lake, the fate of the June sucker and even development of the shoreline.

Everyone, however, seemed to agree that planning for the lake's future was important and long overdue, no matter how difficult that task might be.

Reed Price, director of the Utah Lake Commission, which is composed of representatives from local cities and agencies, said that about 150 people total attended Thursday's meeting and another on Wednesday. Public comment will be used to form a master plan for the lake's future.

"I think this plan will be able do great things for Utah Lake," he said. "By creating a master plan, we will be able to have a document that helps us move in a focused direction to make Utah Lake a better place."

Brigham Young University student David Holden said he came to represent family property near the lake. His family would like to see commercial development of the lake, which "is notorious for being a cesspool," he said.

To solve that problem, the lake's future should be drastic: drain it, dredge it, stock it anew with native fish, creating an island in the middle with dredgings, he said.

"Ban fishing for three years, and after that, it has a fish population," he said.

He would be willing to pay more taxes to see it happen, he said.

Seventy-year-old Wayne Beesley of Provo said he does not want the lake touched.

"I'm happy the muddiness has kept a lot of people off," he said. "I don't want to see homes or buildings encroaching on the shore. I want all the shore open to the public as public land."

Any development should be kept 1,000 yards away, he said.

Dredging is a bad idea: a boat vacuum to suck up the muck is needed instead, he said.

"Some kind of sucking system to suck up the muck that has been washed in here for years," he said. "They could take it down to a harder surface."

A "couple of pennies' " increase in statewide sales tax should do the job, he said.

Rex Infanger of Pleasant Grove said he regularly fishes at the lake and would like to see a causeway built linking east and west populations of the county. Dredging should also be done to create some areas for cold-water fish species, dug deeply enough to be protected from the constant sifting of the wind.

"I probably won't be very popular, but I think we are wasting our money on the June sucker," he said. The June sucker is one of the most endangered species in the world, and native only to Utah Lake. "We have so few left and we are not even positive they are the same genetic strain."

Instead, the lake should be managed to bring back the cold-water trout that thrived here a century ago -- returning the lake to a condition to support those trout would automatically rejuvenate June sucker habitat too, he said.

Merrill Webb, one of Utah Valley's leading bird watchers, said he was grateful a Utah Lake Commission was created by the state this year.

"Because of all the different entities that have interest in this lake, there has to be some management," he said. "There has to be a philosophy."

That philosophy should begin by conserving all existing wetlands, he said. Lakeside cities should enact laws to protect the wetlands from development such as those that already exist in Saratoga Springs.

"Why not have unified zoning laws around the lake?" he said.

Next, there needs to be a concerted effort to rid the lake of phragmites -- a big, sharp, invasive reed that puts homes at risk as a fire hazard, displaces native flora and fauna, allows mosquitoes to thrive and is very difficult to get rid of.

And if anything should go extinct, he said, it should be the idea of a Utah Lake causeway.

"I don't like the idea of dividing the lake into two," he said. "It is an ecosystem. How do you divide it without negative impacts?"

Dredging would likely only stir up more muck, damaging the lake's already damaged ecosystem, he said.

And Provo Bay must be preserved because of the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of birds that rely on it in their global travels, he said.

"I don't want to see Provo Bay mucked with at all," he said.

Utah County and local cities should invest in a large, interactive, interpretive center to be built at the lake shore, to educate children on how birds, wetlands and the lake work together, he said.

"There is no place for them to go to get organized presentations on wetlands or waterfowl," he said, noting that similar centers at other lakes in Utah have been successes.

Regina Bixler of Provo said she came to the meeting after moving here from Lake Erie two years ago, thinking her experience there might be useful.

The meeting taught her otherwise, she said.

"This is totally different," she said of Utah Lake. "I would like to see them clean it up if it is as dirty as they say it is."

Rather than a causeway, perhaps a ferry system should be considered, she said.

Natural resource conservation of the lake should be the valley's top priority, she said.

Residents who missed both meetings can still offer their view of the lake's future. For information, call the Utah Lake Commission at 851-2900.