We are not policy experts. We are residents looking at numbers. Here's a back-of-envelope idea
an actual policy team could refine. The point is to show two things: the "we can't possibly
afford to fix this" framing is wrong, and the fix doesn't require uprooting a single family.
Here's the idea in plain English.
Utah's water crisis is not, fundamentally, about money. It is about political will to confront
a specific industry. The industry itself, in dollar terms, is small. Utah alfalfa and
hay together make up roughly 0.2% of state GDP, a share the Salt Lake Tribune compared to
amusement-park revenue.
The hard part isn't the cost. The hard part is doing it in a way that doesn't betray families
who have farmed this land for a hundred years. So here's the proposal: a voluntary
transition fund that pays Utah's alfalfa farmers, on their own terms, to choose
whichever of three paths fits their family.
Option 1. Switch to a less thirsty crop on the same land. Sorghum, dryland
wheat, sunflowers, barley, and industrial hemp all use a fraction of the water alfalfa
demands. A transition grant covers new equipment, certified seed, and a few years of bridge
income while a farmer stays on the same land, in the same town, doing the same work, just
with dramatically less water. For most farmers, this is probably the right answer.
Option 2. Retire on Utah's dollar. The average American farmer is over 60. A
generous buyout package for land, water rights, and retirement income gives older operators a
dignified exit with money in the bank. Many would take this deal in a heartbeat. The land
goes back to native rangeland or fallow, the water goes back to the river.
Option 3. Relocate, only if a farmer wants to. For operators who specifically
want to keep growing alfalfa, help them set up in a part of the country where it actually
belongs. Wisconsin grows more alfalfa than any state in America, almost all of it rainfed.
Cropland in Oregon ($4,350 per acre), Washington ($3,410), and New York ($3,850) is cheaper
than Utah's irrigated cropland ($8,200). The math works in their favor. Voluntary only.
Nobody gets forced off their land.
Who pays? Distribute the estimated $2 to $3 billion over a decade and it
costs roughly $30 to $120 per Utah resident per year, the same range Richter et al. estimate
for compensating farmers in place. Or, since the Church effectively co-governs Utah, the
Church itself could fund it directly out of existing investment returns. The Ensign Peak
portfolio alone holds an estimated $57 billion in U.S. stocks publicly disclosed to the SEC.
A 4% redirection of that single portfolio would cover the entire program.
(Faithful members wouldn't even have to tithe an extra dollar.)
The Church will not do this, of course. But the point stands.
"It's too expensive" is not a real argument. It is a cover for "we don't want to."
What about the farmers? Most Utah alfalfa farmers are doing exactly what
their grandfathers did, on land their families have held for a century, under laws that have
always rewarded full diversion. They are not the villains. The villains are the politicians
who refuse to lead the industry through a transition the math has been screaming about for
twenty years. A voluntary, three-option transition fund is the most farmer-friendly version
of the response. It treats them as partners, not problems. Families stay in Utah if
they want to. Farmers keep farming if they want to. The only thing that has to end
is alfalfa irrigation at status-quo volumes, because the lake, the desert, and the math give
us no other choice.
None of this is easy, and we are not claiming this is the only path or even
the right one. We are not policy experts. This is a back-of-envelope sketch from residents
watching the lake die. But somebody has to start drafting real solutions, because the people
we elected to do it aren't. If our leaders won't lead, we will at least put the math on the
table.
The lake is dying. The fix is cheap. The barrier is political, not financial.
