After The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints made significant water donations to the Great Salt Lake in recent years, Utah Governor Spencer J. Cox presented the Presiding Diocese with a token of appreciation.
Bishop W. Christopher Waddell and his counselors Bishop L. Todd Budge and Bishop Sean Douglas met with the governor on Wednesday, March 25, at the Utah State Capitol.
“We want to thank you and know how incredibly fortunate we are to have you as friends and neighbors,” Governor Cox said.
“We feel the same way,” Bishop Waddell told the governor.
“As a church, we are truly blessed to have you as citizens of this state to lead us and to work closely together and collaborate on matters that affect all of us,” he said, according to a news release from ChurchofJesusChrist.org.
Joel Ferry, executive director of the Utah Department of Natural Resources, praised Bishop Waddell’s speech about the church’s efforts to conserve water in 2023.
“That was really the turning point,” Ferry said. “We need to recognize that we have a responsibility to steward this precious resource. When the church leads by example, we do better and our jobs become a lot easier. It’s more ingrained in the culture to help people recognize that and acknowledge, ‘If they can do it, so can we.'”
In 2023, the church announced a donation to deliver more than 20,000 acre-feet of water annually to the Great Salt Lake in perpetuity. And in 2025, the Church released 10,000 acre-feet, or 3.26 billion gallons, of water from Utah Lake into the Great Salt Lake. Water comes from a lease owned by the church.
The Great Salt Lake is the largest saltwater lake in the Western Hemisphere, but its water levels have been declining for decades.
Officials blamed much of the low levels on overconsumption, the Deseret News reported.
Initiatives to save water
In addition to donating to the Great Salt Lake, the church has also worked to conserve water by using smart irrigation controllers and eliminating non-functional grass in some areas.
In March 2025, the church announced plans to save more than 500 million gallons of water annually by installing more than 3,000 smart controllers at facilities across the Intermountain West.
At Salt Lake City’s Temple Square, ground crews are combining water-friendly landscaping with smart controllers as part of ongoing renovations on the site.
The church has been redesigning the landscape around church facilities since the early 2000s to better reflect the local climate and conserve water.
This includes phasing out purely decorative or “non-functional” lawns in new meeting places and reducing or completely eliminating non-functional lawns in Washington County, Utah and southern Nevada.
take care of the earth
In November 2025, Elder Gerald Caussé of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles spoke about the sacred duty to care for God’s creation as part of a stewardship symposium at Brigham Young University.
“Our Heavenly Father has entrusted to His children the responsibility of stewardship of His creation, a sacred duty to care for every element of this world so that it may live up to the measure of its creation and contribute to the glorious work of human salvation and exaltation,” he said.
Elder Coase also said that caring for the earth and caring for its people are inextricably linked.
As part of its stewardship, the Church continually strives to treat the earth’s natural resources wisely and to set an example through the responsible management of its global operations.
General handbook updates
The latest update to the General Handbook: Service in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on March 18 includes the addition of a new section on caring for the earth (see 38.8.6).
This section states, “The Church strives to improve operational practices regarding the use of natural resources. It also strives to help communities address environmental issues.”
This section also encourages members to care for the Earth, manage it wisely and preserve it for future generations.
