Only one highway moves commuters south to Salt Lake
City, squeezing cars between the Wasatch Mountains and the Great
Salt Lake.
The Utah Department of Transportation
wants to change that with its proposed $370 million Legacy Highway,
a controversial 125-mile freeway that just hit a speed bump. On
Sept. 5, the Environmental Protection Agency announced it had
“remaining concerns’ about the freeway that had to be
addressed.
The agency is concerned that the
lake’s internationally recognized wetlands would be damaged by the
proposed highway running parallel to I-15. The EPA, which has the
power to veto the project, said the state had not selected the
“least-damaging alternative,” and it found the proposed “Legacy
Nature Preserve” inadequate. Though it does not offer an
alternative plan, the EPA recommends that the Army Corps of
Engineers deny Utah a necessary federal permit to build in the
wetlands until the state resolves these
issues.
Environmentalists celebrated the
announcement. “This is a crushing blow to the Legacy Highway,” says
Marc Heileson of the Utah Chapter of the Sierra Club. He says the
freeway would become a bonanza for developers who would further
damage the area’s wetlands.
The Department of
Transportation isn’t worried, though. As Carlos Braceras, who leads
the Legacy Highway team, says, “These latest comments are
reflections of how far the project has come,” noting that the EPA
has been actively involved in the project since early 1997.
Braceras says the road is in its “fine-tuning stages.”
* Tim Sullivan
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline A highway hits a speed bump.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
