@MentORPHEUS

You won't care about the seagulls that used to migrate to nest on a former island in Mono Lake before humans hundreds of miles away diverted much of its watershed to grow lawn grass in a desert

Funny you should mention that: literally the exact same thing is happening here. The Great Salt Lake is slowly drying up as more and more of the water from what used to be its tributaries is being diverted to supply the ever-expanding construction of new communities and business districts all along the Wasatch Front. I see posters at the school I work at exhorting us to "Save the Great Salt Lake!" and can only shake my head in bemusement, as it's doubtless the very people causing the problem who are wringing their hands and making posters about fixing it. The locals know precisely why the lake's drying up and who's to blame but "pack the faggots up and ship 'em back to California to lie in the shit-and-drug crusted bed they made" isn't a winning political platform in the population centers.

But I digress. You're absolutely correct about the problems caused by unrestricted population growth. My point wasn't "that's not a problem because it hasn't affected me yet" - to the contrary, as I said, my town has absolutely exploded in size and population since my folks moved here in the '80s, to the point we have drug and gang problems and a permanent homeless population, none of which existed here when I was growing up.

My point is it's all happening within a very limited geographical area with respect to the state as a whole. Yes, urban sprawl will continue to spread through the areas immediately surrounding the Wasatch Front, but the urbanized areas of the Wasatch Front occupy, at absolute most, 1/10th of the entire geographical area of Utah (and I'm probably being outrageously generous in my estimation there).

There is a lot of arable, livable land throughout the rest of Utah people could live in that wouldn't come with any of the problems of heavy urbanization. Especially if they stopped insisting on wasting precious water on stupid, useless penis-substitute status symbols like lawns and fucking golf courses. All you have to do is not choose to cram yourself into a city.

Of course, that's ignoring the Chicago Problem of all the more rural areas and communities in Utah still being beholden to the state government, which is seated in the very heart of that urban hellscape, but that's a problem of politics, not of natural resources.