Utah's 2025 Drought and Governor Cox's Response
All of Utah is already experiencing moderate to severe drought conditions, even as peak summer temperatures still lie ahead of us. This drought, paired with rampant municipal water waste, means Utah will see another summer of wildfires, reservoir declines, and plummeting water levels at the Great Salt Lake.
Main Street in Cedar City, Utah. The Iron County Water District wants to burden local residents with massive amounts of debt and hike up water rates by 400 – 700%. Photo: DXR
Utah’s drought map as of July 3, 2025. All of Utah is experiencing moderate to severe drought.
Image from: U.S. Drought Monitor
In response, Governor Cox has once again called on Utahns to pray for rain and encouraged Utahns to conserve water by reducing outdoor usage and fixing leaky pipes. This misleading rhetoric completely ignores the fact that more than 85% of the water we use in our cities and on our farms comes from snowmelt – not rain. More importantly, the Governor seems to have forgotten what he does for a living.
Since 2022 when Gov. Cox last called for divine intervention to solve the water problems his administration helped create, he has made some disastrous water policy decisions. In 2023, he shot down our resolution to set a minimum elevation goal for restoring the Great Salt Lake to 4,198 feet above sea level. Gov. Cox called our measure “a dumb idea” and said he doesn’t need a number to tell him what to do.
Gov. Cox’s administration is also proposing Bear River Development, a diversion of the largest source of water to the Great Salt Lake, the Bear River. His administration, through the Utah Division of Water Resources, is working to advance this destructive, unnecessary water project. We have enough municipal water, we just need to use it more efficiently. But instead of having the courage to mothball this calamitous idea, Gov. Cox is turning a blind eye to what his own cabinet is doing. He’d rather be on the lookout for marketing schemes to hide this malfeasance.
New pipelines and dams aren’t the answer to Utah’s drought, no matter what the Governor’s water agency claims. Such proposals will only encourage water waste, incur immense debt on the backs of hard-working taxpayers, further dry up the Great Salt Lake, and create a legacy of toxic dust that will sicken Utahns for decades to come.
Gov. Cox’s water agency has also continuously lobbied the Utah legislature against phasing out the massive property tax collections which encourage Utahns to waste water. Utah is America’s #1 highest municipal water user because we pay property taxes on housing, automobiles, and businesses to lower the price of municipal water.
Every previous Utah governor since 1992 has criticized the collection of these property taxes, with Governor Leavitt coining the phrase “make the users pay” for water. But Gov. Cox has been silent on the matter, even as Utah has generated global headlines for its ridiculously cheap municipal water and profligate water use in the face of record low Great Salt Lake water levels.
The only serious solution to drought is ambitious conservation programming which Utah’s executive branch happily disregards.
Maybe the next time the Governor gets down on his knees to pray, he should ask himself why he refuses to accept the Lord’s answers to Utahns’ prayers for the future of our Great Salt Lake. Perhaps we need to pray for real leadership instead of marketing hype. Nothing less than holding state leadership accountable will create a sustainable water future for ourselves and the aquatic landscapes that preserve our quality of life.