Comment EI-31426
Received or sent (printed as 12/12/2021)
The Surface Transportation Board must require an Environmental Impact Statement before proceeding to review the request of the Tooele Savage Rail to complete its 12-mile connection to the inland port satellite facility known as Grantsville Business Park. • The rail line itself will cross the wetlands of the Great Salt Lake which are categorized as "high functioning" because they are nesting grounds for millions of migratory birds--as well as local wildlife. These wetlands are already under attack because the warehouse construction at the nearby Utah Inland Port is in violation of best building practices, and because the Great Salt Lake is receding as a result of climate change. • Please be aware that this general area is already out of attainment for ozone and PM 2.5. Nearby Salt Lake County has had sometimes had the distinction of literally having the world's worst air quality on certain days. Further degradation of air quality from this proposed project is inevitable because most of the significant number of trucks that would service the projected 20 million square feet of warehouse space of the planned "park" must be diesel trucks (large scale alternatives are not readily available, and no one has proposed a mandate of any kind) and it is likely that the switcher engines used on the Tooele Savage Rail line would also have diesel engines. • Please be aware that there are geographic factors that contribute to our unhealthy air quality problems--especially our winter inversions. Even if our own emissions generations were low, which they are not, it is simply dangerous to add to our air quality problems • It is reasonable to expect that the rail line would bring problems with noise and light that would disturb both wildlife and humans.
Submitted by: Liesa Manuel · Stop the Polluting Port Coalition · 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-31426 · back to the docket sheet