“We promised to work closely together,” Gov. Spencer Cox told reporters at the state Capitol Monday after meeting with Trump last week.

“I told him that it’s going to take funding to help us save the Great Salt Lake,” Cox said. “He didn’t flinch at that at all. He said that he could be supportive of helping us secure the funding that we need.”

Cox, a Republican, said he and the president talked about the potential for $1 billion in federal funding for the lake. The governor said he and other state officials will spend the next few months hammering out a proposal to submit to the federal government. Cox, who returned over the weekend from a series of meetings with the White House and fellow governors in Washington, D.C., didn’t share details on what the plan might include.

The lake began 2026 at its third-lowest level on record due to decades of drought, climate change and redirection of water for use by farmers, cities and industry. Its exposed lakebed contains arsenic, mercury and lead, raising public health concerns about dust blowing into neighboring communities.

In a post Saturday on his Truth Social social media platform, Trump said that it is “very important to save the Great Salt Lake.”

“This is an Environmental hazard that must be worked on, IMMEDIATELY — It is of tremendous interest to me,” the post said. “The people of Utah are spectacular, and they deserve to be helped. I am dealing with your very caring Governor, Spencer Cox, and we are going to make it all happen! MAKE ‘THE LAKE’ GREAT AGAIN!”

Cox has said he didn’t vote for Trump in 2016 or 2020, but endorsed him after an assassination attempt in Pennsylvania 2024, calling his survival a “miracle.”

In September, after conservative activist Charlie Kirk was shot at Utah Valley University, Cox told NPR Trump called him after and praised him for urging unity. Cox said of Trump: “he hasn’t modeled that, and he sees the world a little differently than I do, but at least I can have a conversation with him.”

Cox noted Utah Sen. Mike Lee chimed in on social media to support and amplify Trump’s comments over the weekend.

Cox said it’s not just “the environmental left who’s interested in saving the lake, it’s the MAGA right as well.”

Top Republicans in the Utah Legislature celebrated the new attention in separate news conferences.

“I think it’s a game changer,” Senate President Stuart Adams said of Trump’s support, telling reporters it will take at least $1 billion to restore the lake.

Utah House Speaker Mike Schultz said environmental effects from the lake’s decline could stretch far beyond Utah’s borders and demand a federal solution.

“If we think that we’re going to be able to save the Great Salt Lake without our federal partners,” Schultz said, “it’s just not going to happen.”

The governor also announced Monday that Utah and Idaho have reaffirmed their longstanding agreement to share water from the Bear River, which empties into the Great Salt Lake. The deal comes after a top Idaho lawmaker, sparring with Utah leaders over a gas tax proposal, suggested last month that Idaho could exert pressure by withholding water to the lake.

“We worked with Idaho and said, ‘Hey guys, listen, we’re in this together. We are partners,'”  Joel Ferry, executive director of the Utah Department of Natural Resources, told reporters. “Let’s work together on this instead of, you know, tit for tat, and going after each other.”