Gov. Spencer Cox says Utah is ready to fight flooding, feds and Facebook 

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• Laura Seitz/Pool Photo
• Utah Gov. Spencer Cox speaks to reporters during a televised press conference at PBS Utah on Thursday, March 16, 2023.

With a snowy winter giving way to a wet spring, Utah leaders are facing new challenges in buffering the state from a persistent megadrought.

Speaking to members of the press on Thursday, Gov. Spencer Cox began by applauding The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints for donating a small reservoir's-worth of its water rights to the Great Salt Lake, part of an ongoing state effort to reclaim user rights and reverse the lake's existential decline. Cox then pivoted to current flooding conditions in southern Utah, warning that residents everywhere could see overflowing rivers and creeks as snowmelt is accelerated by rainstorms.

"Flooding is the number one disaster risk in Utah, historically," Cox said. "Please do not drive in flooded streets. The potential for drowning is real."

Cox said the Great Salt Lake has already risen by 2 feet compared to its November low point, and state estimates suggest the spring runoff could see the water level climb by a total of 5 feet.

"We’re about 10 feet below the lake average," Cox said, "so to get 5 feet of that back—potentially—in one spring kind of exceeds our wildest dreams," Cox said.

But Cox was adamant that the state's water crisis has not been solved and he pushed back against insinuations that state leaders might take the recent precipitation levels as justification to ease pressure off of long-term conservation efforts. He noted that successes like the Latter-day Saint Church's water donation wouldn't have been legally possible without reforms passed by lawmakers last year and praised legislative leaders for building on that momentum during the 2023 legislative session.

"Living in Utah is all about preparing ourselves for the next drought, because it’s going to come," Cox said. "We’re going to keep preparing as if drought is normal because drought has always been normal in our state—it’s just been worse over the last decade.

Cox said to expect an increase in the water getting to all of the states lakes, reservoirs and waterways, including those that feed into the Colorado River system.

"[Conservation] was not real two years ago in our state, but it is real now," Cox said. "This isn’t going to just help the Great Salt Lake, it’s going to help Lake Powell as well and our downstream neighbors."

But while water has broken through politically, Utah remains skeptical on broader efforts responding to the impact of climate change, particularly those seeking to accelerate the shift away from fossil fuels. The state opposed a recent Ozone Transfer Rule issued by the Environmental Protection Agency that targets—among other things—coal-fired power plants, and Cox defended the state's position on Thursday, praising Utah's "all-of-the-above" energy portfolio.

Cox said the EPA's rule would "recklessly" force Utah power plants to close down prematurely, leading to a surge in energy prices and putting roughly 2 million residents at risk of power outages.

"We have tremendous new energy resources coming online that produce much less carbon," Cox said. "[But] none of them are able to completely replace the baseload energy that we rely on in the State of Utah."

Cox said Utah is likely to end up fighting the EPA in court, "as often happens with [the Biden] administration." He was also champing at the bit for a looming legal battle with social media companies in the wake of state legislation that strictly regulates the services they provide to minors.

Asked about his potential to sign or veto that legislation, Cox said he hadn't signed it already only because his administration plans to hold a public signing event, to which the media would be invited. Critics of the new social media regulations argue that they violate First Amendment rights to free speech online, but Cox suggested that a demonstrable pattern of social media causing harm to children is comparable to previous legal fights against the tobacco and pharmaceutical industries.

"I’m not going to back down from a potential legal challenge when these companies are killing our kids," Cox said.

Asked if there were any bills from the recently-completed session that he intends to veto, Cox said that his team was tracking roughly 40 problematic bills, but that all of them had either failed to pass or were suitably amended prior to passage. He gave only one example of a bill from that list, a proposal that would have superseded county regulations on mining operations.

"That is one I would have vetoed, but it didn’t pass anyway," Cox said.

He also reiterated his support for expanding free fares on public transit, something lawmakers declined to consider after a monthlong Free Fare February pilot in 2022 led to a surge in ridership, followed by similar gains—particularly on passenger rail—when transit fares were dropped for 10 days last month in conjunction with the NBA All-Star Game.

Cox suggested his administration would "retool" its pitch for a full year of free transit, perhaps to a six-month period or two three-month blocks in the summer and winter. Doing so, he said, would better inform state planning around air quality, traffic congestion and the taxpayer expense of highway widening and maintenance.

"Any time we can get people on the trains and buses—instead of in their cars—that’s just a win for everyone," Cox said. "I think it is something we should seriously keep considering."