Despite pressure from local politicians and business leaders, the Utah Department of Transportation has made no move to suggest it will begin work on Tooele County’s proposed Midvalley Highway before 2020.
Officials from UDOT toured Tooele County last Thursday to assess transportation needs in the area before holding a Friday morning public hearing at Tooele City Hall.
The issue on most locals’ minds—the Midvalley Highway—wasn’t on the Friday’s agenda. However, county officials hosted a lengthy presentation for UDOT on Thursday and dispatched a contingent of representatives to continue the discussion at Friday’s public forum.
Plans to construct the Midvalley Highway have been in the works for about 20 years, said Jared Hamner, executive director of the Tooele County Chamber of Commerce.
UDOT has the project slated for 2020 on its long-term calendar, but a federally-mandated environmental impact statement, which the Federal Highway Administration completed in 2011 in conjunction with Tooele County and UDOT, is set to expire in 2014.
Hamner said the county’s goal for the meeting was to raise the project’s profile and encourage UDOT to take some action that would prevent the environmental impact statement from expiring.
Large-scale projects such as the Midvalley Highway are required to complete an environmental impact statement to demonstrate to the federal government that local agencies have taken environmental conditions into consideration before beginning new construction.
According to the impact statement for the Midvalley Highway, the Federal Highway Administration expressed preference for a route that would bisect Tooele Valley from north to south, meeting I-80 northwest of Stansbury Park and connecting with SR-36 south of Tooele near the Tooele County Detention Center, because the route would have the least impact on local wetlands. Estimates have put the total cost of the project at more than $440 million.
Discussion of the Midvalley Highway dominated the open forum portion of Friday’s meeting. Peter Corroon, who oversees the former Utah Industrial Depot for the Ninigret Group and is a past Salt Lake County mayor, stressed the importance of preventing the Environmental Impact Statement from lapsing.
“We think the Midvalley Highway would bring about 2,300 jobs to the Tooele Valley,” he told UDOT officials. He added that his personal project, the Ninigret Depot, is currently located about 15 miles from the freeway, but needs to have freeway access within 10 miles to attract most businesses.
Grantsville City Mayor Brent Marshall also cited economic development as a key reason he supported the Midvalley Highway project.
“Some of our concerns are very real,” he told UDOT. “We need your help to help our communities grow—and the Midvalley Highway would do just that.”
Marshall said he was aware that most businesses saw the current freeway interchange in Lake Point as a bottleneck that discouraged them from locating in and bringing jobs to Tooele. That same bottleneck was also a major issue for current residents, he said.
“When there are accidents, that highway looks like a parking lot,” said Marshall. “There are people on the freeway trying to get home for three hours.”
Tooele County Commissioner Jerry Hurst spoke during the public hearing and agreed that traffic in Lake Point has become a serious issue for commuters.
“The traffic just stacks up and looks like a parking lot at Christmas time,” he said.
Tooele County Commissioner Bruce Clegg reiterated to UDOT his proposal that the highway be broken into three “phases” that could be funded and constructed separately.
The north section would be “crucial to our cities and our development,” he said. That first phase could also alleviate traffic problems in Lake Point, he added.
Rep. Doug Sagers, R-Tooele, who is also an executive at Mountain West Medical Center, supported the highway during Friday’s open forum. The project was not only critical to Tooele’s economic development, he said, but also essential to statewide emergency management plans.
In the event of a disaster in Salt Lake Valley, Mountain West Medical Center has agreed to take evacuated patients from Salt Lake hospitals. However, SR-36 is currently the best route between the two valleys. Because the road is already at or near capacity, traffic along the route jeopardizes the state’s emergency plans, Sagers said.
“We feel like the Midvalley Highway is a high priority for this valley, and that it should be for this state,” he added.
Local land and business owners also expressed support for the highway project. The public forum exceeded the amount of time UDOT had allotted, and the Transportation Commission closed the meeting to further comments before everyone in attendance had a chance to speak.
UDOT officials proceeded to conduct the remainder of the meeting without directly addressing the Midvalley Highway proposal. Instead, David Schwartz, UDOT’s Region 2 Program Manager, emphasized ongoing and upcoming improvement projects in Tooele County.
Over the past five years, he said, UDOT has spent nearly $54 million here. About $4 million of that helped cover the cost of developing the environmental impact statement for the Midvalley Highway.
Schwartz said UDOT has slated reconstruction of the Old Mormon Trail between Grantsville and Rush Valley for 2014, and plans to begin reconstructing portions of Droubay Road in 2015.
