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Articles by John Keahey |
Jan. 13, 2002 WILL HIGHWAY BE LEAVITT'S LEGACY? By John Keahey © 2002, The Salt Lake Tribune Near the end of his first term, Mike Leavitt was making the rounds to promote prison construction when a reporter jokingly asked if he wanted to be remembered as the jail-building governor. Leavitt cringed, then chuckled, and vowed to find something else to mark his tenure. He did: Legacy Highway. Five and a half years later, the governor's plan for a 120-mile-long freeway from Ogden to Nephi has fallen on legal and political hard times. In fact, the south Davis County segment was supposed to be done by now -- long before the 2002 Winter Games. But something happened on the way to that 2000 grand opening. The segment did not get built. Initial construction did not even start until spring 2001, and now a court order has halted that work and the state is paying thousands a day in delay costs and millions more overall. And Leavitt? The state's top Republican and the driving force behind Legacy finds himself locked in battle with environmentalists, transit advocates and one of Utah's leading Democrats, Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson, over the need for the $451 million highway. In the end, Legacy may never be finished. Even if the courts do sign off, the first segment probably won't be done until late 2005, well after Leavitt's third term is history. No one could have predicted this tortuous path back on July 17, 1996, when Leavitt, seven months into his second term, announced plans for the roadway. At the time, the governor predicted it would take three decades to build the whole thing, but he estimated the first leg from Farmington to Salt Lake City would open in 2000. Leavitt's announcement surprised smart-growth advocates, federal regulators, environmentalists and even rank-and-file state road builders. Carlos Braceras was one of the latter. "I first heard about Legacy by reading about it in my morning newspaper," recalls Braceras, an engineer who became the point person on the highway for the Utah Department of Transportation and last year rose to deputy director. Legacy did not exactly pop up out of the blue. The idea of building another highway parallel to Interstate 15 through Davis County dates to at least the early '60s. In 1995, the Legislature funded a major study of transportation alternatives along the corridor. But plans for such a highway never appeared on any UDOT short- or long-term lists until after Leavitt's announcement. "The governor kicked it up and made it a priority," says UDOT environmental attorney Randy Hunter. The Fast Lane: Hoping to move fast, Leavitt ordered an expedited environmental-impact study of the corridor. That order worried the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which would have to approve an alignment through Great Salt Lake wetlands before construction could begin. According to court documents, Corps officials feared Leavitt's order would make it "harder" to get information about all possible routes. The highway's alignment was an early stumbling block. Cities in Davis County wanted to push the route toward the lake, so they could keep developing westward. The Corps, charged with protecting wetlands, wanted the highway to run farther east. UDOT and the cities agreed on a westerly alignment. But the Corps' top regulator in Utah, Brooks Carter, refused to go along. He insisted in a June 8, 1998, notice that the easternmost route would impact wetlands the least. Two weeks later, Leavitt countered with a plan to preserve 1,600 acres along the western route. He also promised to make the highway a "line in the sand" against future development. Not enough. Carter would not budge. A compromise was needed. So Braceras went back to the cities and told them they would lose the highway unless they yielded. They did. On Oct. 8, 1999, Leavitt announced a new preferred route -- one that mirrored the Corps' choice on the north end between Farmington and Centerville, but jutted farther west on the south near Woods Cross and North Salt Lake. A Corps spokesman in Sacramento said at the time the compromise alignment "appeared permitable." Carter gave a little and the cities gave a little, explains UDOT's Hunter. "Brooks got to us," he says. "He made us change our mind." In addition, Leavitt's proposed ban on development west of the highway was scrapped, while the planned nature preserve was expanded. Legacy foes see the trade-offs in the compromise as too compromising. They insist the Corps wrongly approved a route that is not the least damaging to wetlands -- in violation of the Clean Water Act. This point is a focus in the current legal battle. Through all this route wrangling, Leavitt kept pushing -- publicly and behind the scenes. He regularly flew to Washington and, joined by members of Utah's congressional delegation, lobbied top environmental regulators. Final Roadblocks: In October 2000, the Federal Highway Administration approved Legacy. Six weeks later, the Corps indicated it would follow suit. With those notices, UDOT hired Fluor Ames Kraemer to design and build the road. But when 2001 rolled around, the state still did not have in hand a Corps permit to begin construction. And the Environmental Protection Agency, which could veto any Corps approval, remained concerned about the highway's route. So Leavitt placed a Jan. 5 conference call to EPA Region 8 head Bill Yellowtail and Corps Col. Michael Walsh, among others. Yellowtail told the governor the EPA sent a letter about its Legacy concerns to "highlight where there was some legal liability" for the state, according to Walsh's memo detailing the conference call. Even so, Yellowtail told Leavitt the EPA would "not veto the [Corps] permit." But, Walsh reported, the EPA executive reiterated that "there are NEPA [National Environmental Policy Act] issues." Leavitt spokeswoman Natalie Gochnour says Leavitt clearly recognized there were legal risks in pressing forward despite EPA warnings, "but we had been through a long process and were confident we had done our work right." The Corps issued its Legacy permit Jan. 9, 2001. A year later, those same NEPA and wetlands concerns raised by environmental regulators are part of federal lawsuits against Legacy. Roger Borgenicht, spokesman for the anti-Legacy Utahns for Better Transportation, believes the conference call and other intense lobbying efforts show the "governor, state Legislature and congressional delegation cajoled and pressured federal officials until they buckled and approved a project that all concerned knew was likely illegal." For his part, Leavitt believes the lawsuits will fail. Highway opponents did lose in August before U.S. District Court Judge Bruce Jenkins. In the face of promised appeals, the contractor then accelerated construction. But that work stopped in November when the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a temporary injunction. It won't resume before a mid-March hearing -- if then. Meanwhile, the state is racking up delay costs that could reach $92,500 a day. Growing Pains: Leavitt says his hard-charging approach on Legacy is needed because the highway is needed, especially since the Wasatch Front is expected to gain another 1 million people within 20 years. Remember, Leavitt says, that in the mid-1990s -- when Legacy was announced -- more than 50,000 new jobs were being created annually. That growth threatened to choke Utah's largest metropolitan area. "Today we have [only] 5,000 new jobs a year," Leavitt acknowledges, "but we will get back to 50,000 -- and then what will we do?" Besides, Davis County commutes already can be a nightmare. That's why UDOT wants to widen I-15, build Legacy and expand transit in the region. All three are needed, the agency says, to come close to meeting the area's transportation demands. "If we had met all the 2020 demand without the Legacy Parkway, we wouldn't be building Legacy Parkway," Braceras says. Adds Leavitt: "People have been talking about this [need for a new highway] for decades. The time was right and that is what being a leader is about." Legacy opponents argue a more visionary leader would put transit before new roads. According to the EPA, UDOT gave the transit equation short shrift in its early Legacy studies by limiting projections of commuter rail's impact to peak traffic periods. UDOT Executive Director John Njord bristles at the suggestion his agency soft-pedaled transit. Even so, UDOT wound up increasing the transit component in its final Legacy studies, predicting that buses and trains could handle 12 percent of the proposed traffic by 2020. But even expanded transit and a wider I-15 do not negate the need for Legacy, Njord says. "Back in the 1980s, when we were planning for the [rebuilt] I-15 corridor, we identified a light-rail corridor," Njord says. He believes that UDOT raising that issue in the 1980s eventually led to light rail. Today, TRAX is moving more than 20,000 riders daily in the Salt Lake Valley, less than 1 percent of all commuters. Plans call for expanding that light-rail service in the valley, and building commuter rail through Davis County from Salt Lake City to Ogden. Bus service will be beefed up, too. But like UDOT, Leavitt maintains transit won't cure all commuting ills. Roads must be part of the remedy. In fact, the biggest construction plum of his tenure is the $1.59 billion rebuild of I-15 through the Salt Lake Valley. "I knew the importance of highways, but I did not fully understand how much a part of my administration they would be," he says. "It became evident to me that [Legacy] was my job to do, and I feel good about it." The highway has become so closely identified with Leavitt that some have suggested it be named after him. Even opponents, including the Sierra Club's Marc Heileson, call it the 'Governor's Highway.' " So, should Legacy -- if it's built -- bear Leavitt's name? After all, his predecessor, Norm Bangerter, has a highway. Legacy "already has a name," Leavitt says. |