We understand the desire for the road. But Utah has been down a similar path before when state and local officials pushed construction of the southern leg of Legacy Highway before the legal battles over the environmental studies had been completed. The litigation eventually held up the project for years and cost taxpayers tens of millions of dollars.

We would hope that local officials would be careful not to replay that mistake.

Environmental groups and some Utah Department of Transportation planners are skeptical that the bypass could ever be approved because of its intrusion on wetlands that are bird nesting areas. That kind of construction would likely run afoul of the Clean Water Act, and rightly so.

The potential locations of the bypass lie between I-15 and Farmington Bay. This neighborhood is home of the Farmington Bay Waterfowl Management Area, a major bird refuge in one of the most important flyways in western North America.

Whether Sheep Road could be widened between Parrish Lane and Glovers Lane, linking Centerville and Farmington, and whether the bypass could continue north and west from Glovers Lane toward Syracuse without doing unacceptable damage to the wetlands seems doubtful.

But history also tells us not to prejudge a project. Environmental studies and hearings aren't just for show. Painful and costly though the Legacy Highway legal battle was, it resulted in a much more environmentally friendly project that is truly worthy of the name Legacy Parkway.

With that experience in mind, we believe that UDOT's study of the bypass now under way should go forward. If some way could be found to engineer the bypass in a way that would hold the wetlands harmless, that would be marvelous, because the idea of going around the major interchange of I-15, U.S. 89 and Legacy at Lagoon looks like it makes highway sense.

It also would be a miracle.

If some way could be found to engineer the bypass in a way that would hold the wetlands harmless, that would be marvelous.