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Todd Parker, project director with Arches Utah Lake, gives a presentation among other panelists during a public forum discussing development of islands on Utah Lake held by the Utah Valley Earth Forum on Tuesday, May 15, 2018, at the Orem Public Library. Isaac Hale, Daily Herald

Isaac Hale, Daily Herald

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Travis Bitters, of Logan but originally from Orem, stands among other community members waiting to comment and pose questions during a public forum discussing development of islands on Utah Lake held by the Utah Valley Earth Forum on Tuesday, May 15, 2018, at the Orem Public Library. Isaac Hale, Daily Herald

Isaac Hale, Daily Herald

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Laura Ault, sovereign lands coordinator with the Utah Division of Forestry, Fire and State Lands, presents information during a public forum discussing development of islands on Utah Lake held by the Utah Valley Earth Forum on Tuesday, May 15, 2018, at the Orem Public Library. Isaac Hale, Daily Herald

Isaac Hale, Daily Herald

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Audience members listen during a public forum discussing development of islands on Utah Lake held by the Utah Valley Earth Forum on Tuesday, May 15, 2018, at the Orem Public Library. Isaac Hale, Daily Herald

Isaac Hale, Daily Herald

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Laura Ault, sovereign lands coordinator with the Utah Division of Forestry, Fire and State Lands, presents information during a public forum discussing development of islands on Utah Lake held by the Utah Valley Earth Forum on Tuesday, May 15, 2018, at the Orem Public Library. Isaac Hale, Daily Herald

Isaac Hale, Daily Herald

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Todd Parker, project director with Arches Utah Lake, speaks among other panelists as his presentation is projected for the audience during a public forum discussing development of islands on Utah Lake held by the Utah Valley Earth Forum on Tuesday, May 15, 2018, at the Orem Public Library. Isaac Hale, Daily Herald

Isaac Hale, Daily Herald

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Is building habitable islands on Utah Lake a good idea that will help the environment?

That’s the question that was discussed at a panel Tuesday night at the Orem Public Library sponsored by the Utah Valley Earth Forum — and not everyone agrees as to whether a proposed $6.4 billion project ought to go forward.

The question stems from a proposal by developer Lake Restorations, Inc. to make multiple conservation and restorative changes to Utah Lake, then pay for those conservation projects by building islands in the lake for people to live on.

“It will transform the Lake from an impaired, nutrient-loaded waterway, dominated by invasive species and prone to algal blooms, into a clear-water state lake with thousands of acres of restored native submerged plant zones, millions of June sucker, Bonneville cutthroat trout, and native fish species,” the proposal says.

Accomplishing that would include a $2 billion dredging project to remove nutrient-rich sediments that feed toxic algal blooms, as well as deepening the lake. Both the lake’s shallow depth and its high nutrient contents are thought to contribute to its toxic algal blooms that occur on a near-yearly basis.

But the proposal has its skeptics, a couple of whom sat on the panel Tuesday night.

Ben Abbott is a professor at Brigham Young University who studies hydrology ecosystems and how humans affect them. He has studied ecosystems around the world, and says he was alarmed when he first learned of the proposal last fall.

“To be frank, I was quite alarmed at the scale of the project, and the claims that were made in the proposal, which didn’t seem to me to be based in what we know ecologically not only about Utah Lake but in many other systems where we’ve tried large-scale engineering interventions,” Abbott said.

The proposed project says it would also fund upgrades to six waste treatment facilities around the lake and install 40 biofiltration systems to ensure water flowing into the lake is clean and clear, the proposal says. The building of the islands would be the “economic engine that attracts the private funding for the $6.4 billion conservation investment.”

“Over 30 billion gallons of water conservation savings will be produced through reduced evaporation and removal of miles of invasive plant species,” the proposal says.

Todd Parker, with Lake Restorations Inc., told the dozens of people who attended the panel Tuesday night that the proposal has undergone about a decade of planning. The group is currently working through both federal and state processes in an attempt to make the islands a reality.

The Utah Legislature passed a bill in the 2018 legislative session specifically geared toward the proposal. Sponsored by Spanish Fork state Rep. Mike McKell, the legislation allows for the state, which owns the lake bed, to transfer “appropriately available state land in and around Utah Lake” to private entities in exchange for projects that would offer significant restoration benefits to the lake.

In November of 2017, the group submitted an application for a transfer of state lands with the Utah Division of Fire, Forestry and State Lands. In order to be approved, a process must be followed including an additional environmental impact survey and multiple public comment periods.

Before the first public comment period, though, a team of specialists is being gathered to review the application, said Laura Ault, sovereign lands coordinator for the Utah Division of Forestry, Fire and State Lands.

The timeline of the project could be up to 25 years, the proposal says, though most of the restorative aspects would be completed in the first 10.

Another panel member, Andrew Follett, who is studying environmental science at Brigham Young University, said he appreciated many of the concepts in the proposal, such as improving public transit, but finds himself at odds with the overall concept of bringing people to live on Utah Lake.

“Looking historically, it seems that the history of degradation, or mismanagement of the lake was the story of increasing urbanization and human population pressures. So although there are very beneficial, and probably by themselves scientifically valid and sound proposals in terms of restoring the littoral zone, or June sucker populations, because these are paired with sharp increase in urban lake interface, it seems it becomes counter intuitive if not to some degree paradoxical,” Follett said.

Because of the potential impact to the lake’s ecosystem from such a project, it is the public’s duty to be profoundly skeptical, Follett said.

Millions of dollars a year are put into lake restoration efforts each year, including removing invasive animal species like carp, and invasive plant life such as phragmites, but funding is done on a yearly basis, making it difficult to plan years into the lake’s future, Ault said.

A previous version of this article stated the wrong university that Andrew Follett attends. He is a student at Brigham Young University.