ALAN CHOATE - Daily Herald | Posted: Monday, December 11, 2006 11:00 pm
Clyde Naylor remembers a Utah Lake that was much different than the one we know today.
"When I was really young, there were lots of resorts and things around the lake," said Naylor, who grew up in Utah County and is now the county's public works director. "They had a showboat on the lake ... that would go out of the harbor and they'd have dinner and dancing."
His senior day in high school was at the long-defunct Saratoga Resort, which had swimming and boating, rides, pools heated by hot springs and "lots of fine places to eat."
Naylor was honored this month with the Director's Sovereign Land Award from the Utah Division of Forestry, Fire and State Lands for his 20-plus years of work on Utah Lake issues.
But the work could be just beginning.
A proposed agreement is expected to begin circulating next week that would form a Utah Lake Commission made up of cities bordering the lake, state lawmakers and representatives of state agencies. The commission would be charged with hammering out a master plan for the lake's shoreline that would cover everything from recreation and land use to transportation and conservation.
It's the new version of an effort in the late 1980s to form a planning body for the lake. The lack of such a body has been the main impediment to planning, Naylor said.
"There hasn't been a governmental body that really has been willing to coordinate and communicate on the issues," he said. "There have been little stabs here and little stabs there, but nothing that's overall tried to set up something ... and move it forward."
Naylor said he first worked with the lake in the early '80s, partly because severe flooding at the time forced the erection of protective dikes. In 1985 work started on a trail system -- the first leg went north from Utah Lake State Park.
"The trail system is still my No. 1 interest in the lake because I'd like to get the trail all the way around the lake," he said.
Utah Lake's prior heyday took place in an era when "people depended on the lake at that time for recreation," Naylor said. "Since then, a lot of different things have competed with it -- probably travel is the biggest one.
"It's kind of like what happened to Saltair up at the Great Salt Lake. It just couldn't survive the competition. Things like Disneyland coming in, and more emphasis on recreation in the mountains."
Still, there seems to be a resurgence of interest in lakeside amenities based on public input so far, he said: "I think we'll start seeing some results right away, especially in things like the trail."
The tasks include a rehabilitation of the lake's image, he said.
"The water's rated good. The perception of the lake says that the lake's not good, but that's a false perception," he said. Carp that have taken over the lake have stripped the bottom of vegetation, and wind roils the water and keeps sediment churning.
"The lake has an appearance of being dirty, but it's really just dirt," Naylor said.
This story appeared in The Daily Herald on page D1.