Comment EI-33138
Received or sent (printed as 10/30/2023)
Please do not approve this rail project. The Savage Tooele Railroad is part of a larger conspiracy to sacrifice for profit the life span and well being of the millions of people and animals that live around the Great Salt Lake basin. We have the worst air pollution in the world at times due to cold temperature inversions. The ozone is horrible. Industrial development is hastening the disappearance of the Great Salt Lake. When the dry lake bed blows into the lungs of millions of people the catastrophic health consequences of developments like the Savage Tooele Railroad will become even greater. This may not be part of the environmental assessment, but the whole business plan of the Railroad and the Utah Inland Port Authority is a bust. The Authority was created on the last night of the Utah State Legislative session in 2018 and it is a textbook example of graft. Handing money out to well connected develpers hand over fist. There is no cogent purpose for a rail line through Tooele. The proposed approval of STR’s construction and operation of 11 miles of a new rail line in Tooele County would be a large contributor to a cascade of development consequences having far reaching, undesirable effects, not only there, but throughout the major urban areas of the Wasatch Front where 80% of Utah’s population, over 2.5 million people live. The Draft EA fails to acknowledge that the true purpose of this rail line is to incentivize development of over 35 million square feet of industrial development on land that is currently open space, uplands, playa and wetlands and in some places less than a mile from Great Salt Lake, a critical water body on the verge of ecological collapse. The EA does not take a hard look at the consequences of this, in a valley that is facing a growing environmental crisis with regard to air pollution, and water quality and quantity.
Submitted by: Courtney Henley · 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-36616/comment/EI-33138 · back to the docket sheet