After The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints made significant water donations in recent years toward the Great Salt Lake, Utah Gov. Spencer J. Cox presented the Presiding Bishopric with a token of gratitude.
Bishop W. Christopher Waddell and his counselors, Bishop L. Todd Budge and Bishop Sean Douglas, met with the governor at the Utah State Capitol on Wednesday, March 25.
“We want to thank you and know how incredibly lucky we are to have you as friends and neighbors,” Gov. Cox said.
Bishop Waddell told the governor “we feel the same way.”
“How fortunate we are as a Church to have you leading us as citizens of this state and to be able to collaborate and work together closely on things that impact all of us,” he said, according to a news release on ChurchofJesusChrist.org.
Joel Ferry, executive director of the Utah Department of Natural Resources, praised Bishop Waddell for a speech he gave in 2023 on the Church’s efforts to conserve water.
“That was really a watershed moment,” Ferry said. “We need to recognize that we have stewardship over this precious resource. The Church leading out and setting that example does more good, and it makes our job so much easier. It’s more ingrained in the culture to help people recognize and say, ‘Yes, if they can do it, we can do it.’”
In 2023, the Church announced a donation of more than 20,000 acre-feet of water to be delivered annually on a perpetual basis to the Great Salt Lake. Then in 2025, the Church released 10,000 acre-feet — or 3.26 billion gallons — of water from Utah Lake to the Great Salt Lake. The water comes from leases owned by the Church.
The Great Salt Lake is the largest saltwater lake in the Western Hemisphere, but water levels have been receding for several decades.
Officials have blamed much of the low levels on overconsumption, according to reporting by the Deseret News.
Efforts to conserve water
Beyond the donations to the Great Salt Lake, the Church has worked to conserve water through smart irrigation controllers and by eliminating nonfunctional grass in some areas.
In March 2025, the Church announced plans to save over 500 million gallons of water a year, thanks to the installation of over 3,000 smart controllers at facilities across the Intermountain West.
At Temple Square in Salt Lake City, ground crews are implementing the use of smart controllers in combination with water-wise landscaping as part of the grounds’ ongoing renovations.
The Church has been redesigning landscaping around Church facilities to better reflect local climates and save water since the early 2000s.
That includes gradually phasing out purely decorative or “nonfunctional” grass for new meetinghouses and reducing or completely eliminating nonfunctional grass in Utah’s Washington County and in Southern Nevada.
Caring for the Earth
In November 2025, Elder Gérald Caussé of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles spoke as part of a stewardship symposium at Brigham Young University about the sacred duty to care for God’s creations.
“Our Heavenly Father has entrusted His children with stewardship over His creations, a sacred duty to care for them so that every element of this world can fulfill the measure of its creation and contribute to the glorious work of humanity’s salvation and exaltation,” he said.
Elder Caussé also said that caring for the earth and caring for the people who live in it are inseparably connected.
As part of that stewardship, the Church continually strives to be wise with the earth’s natural resources and to set an example through the responsible management of its global operations.
Update to the General Handbook
The latest updates to the General Handbook: Serving in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on March 18 include the addition of a new section about caring for the earth (see 38.8.6).
The section reads in part: “The Church strives to improve its operational practices in relation to the use of natural resources. It also seeks to help communities address environmental challenges.”
The section also encourages members to care for the earth, be wise stewards of it and preserve it for future generations.
