Ashtyn Asay, Daily Herald file photo

You may have wondered about some recent signs in Utah County that say “Don’t Pave Utah Lake.”

Nobody is proposing to pave all of the Lake, but developers calling themselves “Lake Restoration Solutions” are proposing to dredge up lake-bottom silt to build islands that would cover a fifth of the lake and then build housing for half a million people on those islands. Three major roads would cross the lake.

This project has roused a firestorm of opposition from scientists and from environmentalists, some of whom formed a nonprofit which distributes the “Don’t Pave Utah Lake” signs.

They could also have made signs saying “Don’t Sell Utah Lake,” because large parts of Utah Lake could actually be sold to developers because of legislation passed in 2018.

The law in question is House Bill 272, which first lists nine problems claimed to afflict Utah Lake. To correct those issues, it permits the Utah Division of Forestry, Fire and State Lands to “dispose of sovereign land” in and around the Lake under certain conditions.

Courtesy photo

In order to grant approval for this unprecedented disposal of sovereign public land, the Division must “find” that a comprehensive restoration proposal of Utah Lake will meet 11 criteria, such as “restore the clarity and quality of the water in Utah Lake” and “otherwise improve the use of Utah Lake for residents and visitors.”

Among problems with this law is that developers could promise to meet all the listed criteria, present convincing evidence, acquire part of the lake and then run into unforeseen difficulties such as dead zones developing in the new deeper, calmer water, or instability of the new islands, or plain old bankruptcy.

Among many other defects of HB 272 is the fact that Utah Lake has never ever been clear, and scientists say that its cloudiness helps hold down algal blooms. You can’t “restore” the Lake to something it never was.

Similarly, Utah Lake has always been shallow, which experts say allows wind and waves to stir the water, preventing dead zones harmful to aquatic life. The Lake could be decimated by dredging, as was the case in Poyang Lake, China’s largest freshwater body.

Finally, many local citizens may not think it an “improvement” to have residential islands built on their lake with the inevitable sewage, pollution from heating, vehicles and lawn care, plus causeways for getting traffic to and from the islands.

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Conserve Utah Valley and many others advocate that HB 272 either be totally replaced or carefully amended to strengthen the criteria required for approval of any sale of lake land, with significant up-front bonding to ensure compliance.

This island-building project reminds us of past disasters such as when early settlers overfished Utah Lake’s bountiful June sucker nearly to extinction and then introduced carp to replace them. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

And we should study tiny, oil-rich Dubai, where developers built fancifully shaped islands by dredging up sand from the bottom of the Persian Gulf and then constructed high-density housing on the islands.

The result has been an ecological disaster for Dubai and an economic disappointment, with some of the islands and buildings beginning to sink back into the Persian Gulf.

Ominously, Lake Restoration Solutions’ design director, Robert Scott, and its engineering firm, Geosyntec, were both involved with some of Dubai’s famous soggy islands.

Utah is neither tiny nor oil-rich. We have plenty of available land west of Utah Lake, and many more sensible places to put our hard-earned money. And better common sense.

Accordingly, Provo City recently passed a joint resolution urging reconsideration of past legislation to require that any lake restoration projects “be based in rigorous scientific and ecological understanding of the Lake’s history and ecological services and should be responsive to a robust and transparent public process that includes collective and vigilant oversight from cities, businesses and communities which use and benefit from the Lake.”

American Fork is also considering a similar joint resolution.

Is anything good being done already? Yes, many successful projects are now being carried out by the well-established Utah Lake Commission and other public entities to reduce carp, phragmites and algal blooms while restoring the native June sucker, which, by the way, fed natives for millennia and then saved early European settlers in both Utah and and Salt Lake counties from starvation.

Salt Lake City has a monument to the miracle of the seagulls. Maybe Utah County should have a monument to the June sucker to remind us not to do something stupid again.

If you have an opinion on selling part of Utah Lake for islands and high-density housing, let your Utah legislator know about it with a short, diplomatic email or text.

To find out who your legislators are, go to https://le.utah.gov/GIS/findDistrict.jsp.

Don Jarvis is a Provo environmental volunteer and a retired BYU professor. Ben Abbott is an ecologist in the BYU Department of Plant and Wildlife Sciences.

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