Comment EI-31555
Received or sent (printed as 12/21/2021)
On behalf of UCARE, I urge the Surface Transportation Board to require Savage Tooele Rail to complete an Environmental Assessment prior to the issuance of any STB permit or other agency authorization to proceed with the proposed rail line project. This project and the larger Utah Inland Port system to which it would be linked potentially threaten the local and regional human and natural environments The project could significantly increase air pollution in the Tooele County airshed, which is upwind of the Salt Lake County airshed that often violates federal air quality standards as it is about to do today. The introduction of hundreds of additional daily truck and automobile trips to the project area would exacerbate the aggregated emissions caused by incoming diesel locomotives and the switcher engines that would move rail cars around the railport facility newly connected by the rail line Savage Tooele Rail project would build. The Savage Tooele project, linked as it would be to an expansive satellite port industrial complex, poses threats to nearby wetlands --and associated wildlife-- bordering the Great Salt Lake. This critical wildlife habitat is already under stress from the climate change related desiccation of the GSL. And with Savage Services already a leading coal haulage and oil/gas/mining logistics corporation in Utah, more needs to be known about long-term plans for the type of freights that would be handled at the railport and on the rail line that the Savage Tooele Rail project would connect to Union Pacific and BNSF rail carriers' lines. For these and other reasons, UCARE feels that an Environmental Assessment of the Savage Tooele Rail project proposal should precede any other action by the Surface Transportation Board. Thank you for your thoughtful attention to this request.
Submitted by: Stanley Holmes · Utah Citizens Advocating Renewable Energy (UCARE) · Salt Lake City, UT
The Board publishes this comment in its environmental-comment table for this proceeding. It is quoted here as printed; nothing is inferred from it, and it states the commenter's own position in their own words, not this record's.
Permanent address docketyard.org/d/FD-36524/comment/EI-31555 · back to the docket sheet