“The Lake” screening sparks discussion among USU students

Detailing the decline of the Great Salt Lake and the impact the decline has on the surrounding population, “The Lake”, which premiered at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival, was screened at Utah State University on Oct. 6.  

The Great Salt Lake lies about 90 miles from Utah State University and has had a significant decline in water levels. The film said that the lake’s lowest recorded level was in 2022.  

The free in-person screening also hosted a Q&A session after the film with Commissioner of the Great Salt Lake Hannah Freeze, Great Salt Lake social science network leader Stacia Ryder, and USU professor and water scientist Patrick Belmont.  

“I thought that I knew more about the Great Salt Lake crisis than I did,” said a USU senior studying analytics and information systems who wished to remain anonymous. “This film was kind of eye-opening to me.”  

The 2026 film was filmed from 2023 to 2025. It follows Brigham Young University ecologist Ben Abbott, Westminster University biologist Bonnie Baxter, University of Utah atmospheric scientist Kevin Perry and the former Great Salt Lake Commissioner Brian Steed as they work to save the Great Salt Lake. 

“I think it was very helpful to watch it in this format because you can’t get every perspective,” Blithe Bigelow, outreach coordinator for the USUSA Dialogues Society, said. “I appreciated that it was framed by science and by people who have experience.”  

Belmont said that he appreciated the sense of humanity shown by the scientists featured in the film.  

“We’re not just scientists going through carrying beakers around all the time and whatever else. We’re people and we are doing this work as objectively as possible,” Belmont said. “We are pursuing truth as best we can. That’s our job, and we are also parents and we are brothers and sisters and we care deeply about people. We care deeply about these places.”  

The film explores concerns about the lake. Three of the main concerns in the film were the toxic dust, the collapsed ecosystems and community risks.  

“I love this place, and I love this state,” Morgan Evans, president of the USUSA Dialogues Society, said. “I didn’t think that my five-year plan would include an emergency environmental crisis and having to leave, but that might be the case.”  

Researchers in the film raised concerns about toxic dust from the exposed lakebed spreading miles away from the Great Salt Lake. The toxic dust contains elements such as mercury, arsenic and selenium that can cause respiratory and other cancer-related issues.  

“Some of the new modeling is showing that dust travels,” Ryder said during the Q&A. “Not just to Cache County, but from some of the hydrologists that I work with that study snow and dust say that the dust is going as far north as southern Idaho.” 

The anonymous senior said that she used to be an environmental engineer working on a project that measured the air quality around the Great Salt Lake area.  

“It’s crazy that I was involved in that whole world of collecting research on the impact of air quality, and I didn’t even know the greater context behind it,” the anonymous senior said.  

Researchers also emphasized concerns about people having to move away from Utah. This would be to avoid risks that come from the toxic dust impacting the air quality. 

“The first time I saw this movie, I was walking out and I called my mom and was telling her, ‘You know, you might have to move out,’” Eliza Hegewald, treasurer of the USUSA Dialogues Society said.  

Hegewald said that she feels stressed knowing more about the risks mentioned in the film.  

“I’ve read other stuff about chemical pollution problems in Utah that are frightening on top of our air quality issues that we already have,” Hegewald said.  

 The anonymous senior said that she feels hopeful hearing that the Great Salt Lake problem isn’t too big to fix. 

“I love Salt Lake,” she said. “I would love to go back to Chicago, but one of the places that would be my top postgrad locations would be Salt Lake City, I just love that area so much.” 

Although the film carried heavy topics, it ended with the idea of hope for the future of the Great Salt Lake. 

“I feel very hopeful about the opportunities of the trail that has been blazed because of Bonnie and Ben and Brian, to provide opportunities for us to think bigger and to think broader and to continue to work together,” Freeze said. “That makes me very, very hopeful.”