A new study asks Utahns what they would pay to save the lake, and my art supply receipts have already voted.
SALT LAKE CITY, Utah – A reader once asked whether living near a shrinking lake makes a person gloomy. I told her no, it makes a person efficient, because you learn very fast to love a view while it is still there. I have spent a whole Sunday afternoon painting the Great Salt Lake from memory, and I am sorry to report that the memory is in better shape than the shoreline.
The study that asked us to name a price
Over breakfast I read KSL’s report on how much Utahns would pay to save the Great Salt Lake, which describes a study by two Weber State economists, Matt Gnagey and Therese Cavlovic. They polled Utahns in 2025 and asked how much they would pay in additional taxes to help bring the lake up to a healthy level. The typical answer was up to $144 a year. The high end ran from $370 to $485, and the low end from $37 to $42.
The headline was that the answer was “not much,” which I thought was a little harsh on all of us. I would point out that KSL did not say whether those figures are per household or per person, and in my ward that is the difference between a casserole and a diplomatic incident. The study also nodded to a roughly 40-year-old survey about California’s Mono Lake, which is the sort of cross-state literary allusion I appreciate before nine in the morning.
Naturally I did what any serious person would do. I opened my receipts folder and audited myself.
Five things I currently pay more for than the lake
- A 24 by 36 inch stretched canvas from the art supply shop on my commute, which costs about the same as the low end of that survey range and has never once refilled anything.
- A tube of cadmium yellow so expensive that I now apply it with the care normally reserved for carrying a full pan of funeral potatoes across a parking lot in the snow.
- The thrift-store easel, twelve dollars, wobbles on the left leg, and has taught me more about balance than any Sunday School lesson on the subject.
- A raspberry-lemon bar from the ward bake sale, which I bought back from the table after I had donated it.
- Parking near campus, where a single hour costs more than a good paperback, and the paperback at least has an ending.
I looked at the list for some time. Then I added a sixth item: one gallon of mineral spirits. This was not a good idea and I do not recommend that anyone audit themselves at that hour.
Reeds taller than my easel
Later I walked to the corner of my block to clear my head, and clearing my head meant thinking about reeds. The lake’s problems are many, but one of them is a plant. KPCW reported that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is donating $3 million to the Office of the Great Salt Lake Commissioner to help protect the lake from an invasive plant called phragmites.
Phragmites, the report explains, is a non-native reed that can grow up to 15 feet tall. It uses a great deal of water, raises wildfire risk, degrades shoreline habitat for migratory birds and blocks water from reaching the lake. The money will support government and local conservation groups in restoring bird habitat, protecting shoreline wetlands and keeping natural water flowing in. Commissioner Hannah Freeze will oversee the work, and Gov. Spencer Cox called the lake “fundamental to Utah’s environment, economy and quality of life” in a statement thanking the Church.
I admit I felt a small glow reading that, the kind you feel when a project you have been fretting about finally gets a spreadsheet. At ward council this week someone asked whether we could contribute reed-pulling hours as well. The vote was unanimous. The hours, I notice, were not.
A reed 15 feet tall is also, I realized, taller than my easel, my bookcase and the brother-in-law of the woman who runs the sign-up sheet. That makes it a formidable painting subject. I have decided to paint one in the afternoon light, with a flock of invisible birds, and call it “Understory.”
A tangent about corn
While the oil paint was tacking up, I fell into a pit of agricultural news, because my phone does not know when to stop. It turned up farm.fm’s item about a weather app that tells corn to enjoy the sunshine, and I would like to say that this is the most moving thing I have read this week. Every weather app I own tells me to bring a jacket. None has ever told me to enjoy anything. I would like to be spoken to like corn.
It did make me think about all the living things that depend on somebody, somewhere, getting the numbers right. Reeds do not care about numbers. Birds do not care about numbers. A lake, I suspect, cares only about the arithmetic of water in and water out, which is the least romantic and most stubborn kind of arithmetic there is.
Evening: the actual painting
By seven the studio smelled of turpentine and warm bread, because the neighbor downstairs had been baking again. I laid in the horizon first, with that flat silver line the lake makes on a still evening, then the pale band of the mountains, then the reeds in a sharp, hopeful gold. It is not a great painting. It is a sincere one, which at my level is the better compliment.
I sent a photograph of it to my editor at Bohiney Magazine, who replied that the lake looked “very calm for a crisis.” I said that was the point. Anyone can paint a crisis with a lot of red. It takes a bit more nerve to paint the quiet before the next set of numbers comes in.
If you enjoy the layered, slightly tearful way British papers peel a story apart, you may like The British Onion, which I read once the receipts are done. It reminds me that every headline has another layer underneath, and that there is usually a joke in the layer nobody wanted to open.
The study said Utahns would pay up to $144 a year. I find I would pay that. I might even pay it twice, if somebody else would do the reeds.
You can find more of my daily notes at The London Prat, along with the story of how I got the mineral spirits stain out of the good tablecloth.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/