(wind blowing) (water splashes) - We can think of an era when people had the lake in their lives and they came to it with that kind of natural respect.

They didn't have to think about respect.

It was part of how they lived with the lake.

So this sand is not crystalline.

In fact, if you pick it up, it doesn't feel coarse like regular sand.

They didn't have to label it harmony.

It was part of them and they were part of it.

That's been something that has come to me often when I've been out here.

- [Liz] A question that community activist Elizabeth Weight, wants these local high school students to think about on this Earth Day.

What have we done to the Great Salt Lake?

- I'm standing on a lake that has been affected by over 20 years of drought, and recent years of real neglect by policymakers and other people who have diverted water.

- [Liz] Weight, who is a former state legislator, is now focused on teaching teens who may be Utah's future leaders about the Great Salt Lake.

- If we have the mindset of, well, somebody else will do it, then nobody else will and nothing will get done.

- Rosie Lander was one of a handful of teens from the First Unitarian Church who joined Weight on the south shore of the lake to learn of its history and possible future.

- It would be nice to see that there is something still in that water, keeping the ecosystem going.

- I'm hoping to see like change, like I heard that the water level rose up a little bit from last year, which makes me hopeful.

- [Liz] The fact that any kid would wake up early on a cloudy Saturday to learn about problems at the lake gives Weight hope.

- My purpose is to help others become active in speaking to policymakers who don't know any more than they do.

- [Liz] Especially people like Liam Mountain La Malfa.

- It certainly doesn't feel good to see the lake depleted, because it just reminds me of all the potential devastation that could come.

- [Liz] His desire to save the lake is personal.

- I know that I have asthma.

I know that a lot of people in this state have asthma and we already suffer, given the way the Salt Lake Valley creates inversions with dust and trace amounts of substances, like arsenic flying around in the air, released by the drying up of the lake.

It will just be incredibly difficult.

- If we want to see something done, then we have to do it ourselves.

And it's unreasonable to think that 15 and 16 year olds, that it should be their responsibility to fix what the older generations broke.

But that's the truth.

We have to do it.

If we don't do anything, then nothing will get fixed.

- [Liz] So they're doing what they can to grasp the severity of the problem, in hopes of taking what they've learned to state leaders and other teens to get more people involved in saving the Great Salt Lake.

- I would say you have to act now or else we're gonna have a really hard time in the future, like the youth.

This is about us, our future.

We're gonna be the people who are living here in the future and making decisions.

- [Liz] Reporting from the edge of the Great Salt Lake.

I'm Liz Adeola for Utah Insight.