The Utah House approved a bill Thursday allowing the state to trade artifact-rich lands in Draper to clear the way for a rail station and surrounding development.
Lawmakers voted 52-21 to send HB179 to the Senate after hearing assurances from bill backers that state and federal laws will safeguard the 3,000-year-old American Indian artifacts even if the transit-oriented village is built over it.
Detractors disputed that claim on the House floor, and afterward an archaeologist agreed there is no such guarantee.
State law requires only a review of the property and no particular protective measures, said Matthew Seddon, a consulting archaeologist and member of the Utah Professional Archaeological Council.
U.S. law will apply if a federal agency participates in the commuter-rail project, but it doesn't spell out mitigation.
"It could be building a Popsicle stick model of the site," Seddon said.
"We're relying on the good will of [the Utah Transit Authority]," said Rep. Janice Fisher, D-West Valley City. "I'm very worried about this process."
The land is east of the Jordan River near 13500 South.
The Legislature previously protected it, and the state redrew plans to shield it when building the Bangerter Highway. Two years ago, the state archaeologist found evidence of corn among the village ruins, possibly demonstrating that farming arrived in the Great Basin about 500 years earlier than previously assumed.
The land nearly was protected by a permanent conservation easement last summer until then-House Speaker Greg Curtis asked the Department of Natural Resources not to sign it.
Curtis, a lawyer, represented a landowner who wanted to trade for the property. Interest in the rail-side project has since shifted from Curtis' former client to a developer who hired UTA board member Terry Diehl to consult on the project.
Rep. Kerry Gibson, R-Ogden, sponsored the land-swap bill and argued it actually provides better protection of artifacts. The state would trade for private land to the north, where Gibson said ruins currently are unprotected.
The exchange, he added, gives archaeologists access to that land for study.
That argument puzzled Seddon, who said there is no guarantee of any artifacts even existing on the private land. The archaeologists' council sent a letter to DNR last month opposing the swap and favoring preservation so future scientists with better tools could study the site.
"We just cannot understand," Seddon said, "why UTA is interested in developing on a known and very special archaeological site."
Rep. Greg Hughes, R-Draper, answered that on the floor: train ridership. The state land that UTA is eyeing for a station on its Salt Lake City-Provo FrontRunner line is close to Bangerter, he noted. The park-and-ride lot would be more visible and accessible.
"This influences ridership," said Hughes, who is also a UTA board member. "This makes all the sense in the world."
