In January 2023, a consortium of state and regional experts published a report noting that the changes we make “over the next few months” to save the Great Salt Lake are paramount to our state’s economy, health and habitability. On Feb. 8, several news outlets reported that Tiger Woods’s design firm will be building an 8,000-yard golf course at the Marcela Club, which will be accessible to 500 high-net-worth member households. There are few events that as starkly demonstrate the disconnect between our reality and developers’ priorities in our state. The U.S. Geologic Survey estimates that Utah golf courses currently use 38 million gallons of water per day, and several reports suggest this is a drastic underestimate. Upon hearing stories on our local media, I kept wondering, “why is no one asking if Tiger Woods is also bringing the water for this course?”
It is important for all of us with lungs to understand what the drastic shrinking of the Great Salt Lake means. Toxic dust from the drying lake, containing arsenic, cadmium, mercury, and cyanotoxins, among other noxious pollutants, has already been observed as far away as southern Utah and Wyoming. Those dusts cause cancer in our families and make soil and livestock toxic. This means our ability to safely breath, eat and raise our families is literally at stake.
We have evidence-based strategies that can be activated and legislation to empower state and local authorities to act with commensurate resources. Paramount to this is conservation, which means drastically reducing the water we use and making those choices now. This includes not building more golf courses in the second driest state in America, even if they were already approved. The approval of this project was lunacy. Choosing to still move forward with it given the information we have today is unethical.
Golfers are certainly not to blame for the shrinking Great Salt Lake. We all are. But we need to take the easy wins where we can to save water, even if it means changing course.
Theresa Wolters
Park City