The next step at GSL: Coalition-building, funding

MAN's series on preserving Spiral Jetty
Part One: The future of Spiral Jetty.
Part Two: What's happening to the Great Salt Lake?
Part Three: Spiral Jetty, the Great Salt Lake and Dia
Part Four: Dia's 'buffer' approach to preserving Spiral Jetty
Part Five: The next step at GSL: Coalition-building, funding
Postscript: Spiral Jetty: Is federal protection a useful option?

In September, at an early meeting of Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman's just-appointed Great Salt Lake Advisory Council, an official from the Utah Department of Natural Resources made a surprising admission: The reason that Utah, the state with the most industry-permissive extraction policies in the West, had convened a major new effort to consider how to best utilize the lake was that thousands of people from around the world had raised a stink when an oil company tried to drill near Spiral Jetty. Instead of taking a pinprick approach to conservation, the state decided to take a comprehensive approach. [Photo]

The advisory council, which includes environmental advocates such as Friends of Great Salt Lake, industry groups such as Great Salt Lake Minerals, and a range of local administrators and elected officials, is charged with ensuring the long-term viability of GSL and its  ecosystem. Conspicuous by its absence on the panel is the Dia Art Foundation, which owns Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty. Dia is based in New York, all of the other groups are at least nominally Utah-based. (For example, Great Salt Lake Minerals is a subsidiary of a Kansas-based company.)

"The makeup of the commission was intended to represent a broad collection of stakeholders while maintaining an effective body," Huntsman spokesperson Lisa Roskelley told me. "Yes, all of the representatives live in the state, though certainly anyone from Dia who is interested would be more than welcome to attend any of the meetings or be part of the technical committees that will be providing information to educate and aid the process."

(Dia said that it looks forward to making a presentation to the group.)

The council's focus poses two challenges to Dia: First, the state of Utah is taking a holistic approach to lake management and so far this year Dia has focused on the Jetty itself but not on broader issues in the ecosystem. Next, if Dia becomes more broadly interested in working on issues relating to the GSL ecosystem, how can a New York-based non-profit, a group with responsibilities, projects and close relationships in Texas, New Mexico, and all over New York state, be effective in Utah?

One way is for Dia to be involved with state officials. For example, Dia took the lead in making sure the governor trekked out to see Spiral Jetty. Dia officials say they will continue to work with the governor and with the Utah Department of Natural Resources.

But Dia could also be effective from a distance by forming coalitions with interested groups, a more rigorous version of its ad hoc relationship with FOGSL. Dia says that it is counting on FOGSL to help keep an eye on the Jetty through the advisory council process, but Dia has no formal connection to FOGSL. It provides FOGSL with no funding for Jetty-specific work or advocacy.

"We haven't, to be honest with you, considered re-granting to them," Dia deputy director Laura Raicovich told me. "That's not really what Dia does."

"That's not a bad idea," added Dia director Philippe Vergne. "But we haven't thought about it."

And why should it? Dia has has little experience in participating in broad-based coalitions that work on mutual interests. (For example, FOGSL was unaware of Dia's 'buffer plan' until I asked FOGSL about it.) Meanwhile environmental groups are accustomed to working in coalition with a range of allies -- associations of hunters, fishermen, philanthropy, scientists and so on.

Dia's approach isn't surprising: Art organizations, especially art museums, typically don't work in coalitions with other groups on issues such as this because there's rarely a reason to. (Is there an art museum equivalent to an entire ecosystem?)

To make matters even more difficult, there is little or no philanthropy leadership around conservation issues at the Great Salt Lake, nothing remotely like the coalition-driving philanthropic partnerships that have built up around other ecosystems, such as the Hudson River. Dozens of organizations work on issues that impact the health of the Hudson. Down the Atlantic seaboard, the largest non-profit that works on Chesapeake Bay issues, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, spends $20 million a year. FOGSL's operating expenses last year were $57,000.

And therein lies an organizational challenge for groups with an interest in the GSL, and specifically for people with an interest in Spiral Jetty: It's hard to blame Dia for not partnering with a non-existent coalition. It's hard to expect FOGSL to have morphed into the Chesapeake Bay Foundation when GSL conservation issues are relatively new. It's hard to know who would organize philanthropy around GSL issues, the kind of issues that are important to brine shrimpers, hunters and art lovers. There is an opportunity for leadership.

Vergne has been at Dia for less than two weeks, but it sounds like that's where he wants to go.

"We are taking a very holistic view of what responsibility means," he said. "As you know and due to the nature of the piece in both cases, Spiral Jetty and also for the Lightning Field, when we talk about the enviornment we're talking about miles away from the piece...[The] work needs to be secure and protected so of course it's the road and the physical nature of the Jetty but it's also preserving the experience of the work and the experience of the work includes the way you access the work the way you experience the work on site."