A bird flits in and out of weedy bushes. The Jordan River slowly meanders by, an empty beer bottle floating in its murky waters.

The drums of war are silent.

But in the coming days, they almost surely will beat again.

"We will do all that we can to do this the right way," said Marc Heileson, regional representative of the Sierra Club. "But if the end result is taking a broken product and putting a new wrapper around it, they're going to be surprised - and it's going to be a bad one."

The quiet field near the Jordan River is a fundamental part of what Heileson is talking about. But his real focus is a swath of land a couple hundred yards down the road.

Here, the weeds have been bulldozed and soil, rock and road grade material laid down. It's a thick stripe of dirt that stretches on for nearly four miles and is lined on its eastern edge by newly built homes.

This is the beginning of the Legacy Parkway - a 14-mile limited-access highway designed to provide an alternate to Interstate 15 into Davis and Salt Lake counties.

Miles of bicycle and equestrian trail will line the eastern side of the roadway. A 2,098-acre nature preserve will be created along its western borders.

That is, if Legacy is ever built.

On Nov. 16, 2001, the U.S. 10th Circuit Court in Denver put a stop to construction of the road after a successful lawsuit by the Sierra Club, Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson and Utahns for Better Transportation.

The ruling: The Utah Department of Transportation needed to be more thorough in its environmental impact statement - a study of a project's impact on the environment required before permission and permits are given to build.

Five particular issues needed to be looked at more closely: Integration of transit and highway, width of the roadway, wildlife impact, the location of Legacy and "sequencing," which is a decision about what needed to be built in the corridor first: commuter rail, Legacy or an expanded I-15.

Three years later, with nearly $18 million in delay costs racked up, UDOT is prepared to release the results of that supplemental study, which cost around $3 million.

State officials say it will be more comprehensive, more thorough and better able to withstand any subsequent court challenges.

"We are confident," says UDOT spokesman Tom Hudachko. "The Legacy Parkway will be built. It needs to be built."

Without it, the fields and wetlands surrounding the Great Salt Lake will be open to development, Hudachko argues. Nearly 80 percent of the land UDOT has purchased for the nature preserve was deemed suitable for development.

And that is the sticking point.

"The way development is coming out here, [the preserve] would have never happened," said John Thomas, UDOT project director. He points to endless rows of houses creeping up the mountains to the east of the swath of land set aside for preservation.

"You've got all this area under conservation. You've got the Parkway as a boundary to development."

Not so, say conservationists.

"It's easy to say, but I'm not sure that it's easy to defend," said Lynn de Freitas of Friends of the Great Salt Lake. "It just seems to me that if we're really sincere about preserving wetlands, where is development getting us in the holistic picture of how we look at this place?"

Heileson calls it a "bully tactic" for state officials to assert that construction of Legacy is the only way to protect the natural lands nearby.

That attitude is evident in the actions of UDOT after the court stopped construction of the road, he says. The agency has continued to buy land and it has completed construction on Park Lane, a connecting interchange in Farmington.

But UDOT is sticking to the same conclusions it made about the roadway in the first environmental impact statement completed in 2001. The essential finding is that even with the addition of commuter rail in the corridor and expansion of I-15, Legacy is needed. The study also concludes that changing the road's alignment would unnecessarily force the demolition of 149 to 279 homes.

"Our initial findings were accurate," Thomas said. "Have we tweaked things and made it better? Yes."

Currently, there are two alternatives to I-15 into Davis County from Salt Lake: A narrow dirt road called Sheep's Lane and state Road 106.

"The numbers are pretty clear to us that commuter rail alone is not going to solve the problem," said Hudachko.

During the initial study of Legacy in 1997, mass transit was considered as an option, but not given as much attention because of the newness of the system. TRAX was built in Salt Lake City in 1999, and commuter rail wasn't even a "blip on the screen," said Hudachko.

"We probably did some sleight of hand for what we thought the transit projects were," acknowledged Thomas. "Our models now are much more accurate in predicting. It allows us to make a better decision."

The question of what to build first has also been answered in the meantime, says Thomas. It's impossible to expand I-15 without an alternative, and commuter rail is well on its way to begin running by 2007.

The logical sequencing of projects would be commuter rail, Legacy and then I-15, according to Hudachko.

But de Freitas says that again shows arrogance on the part of UDOT. Transit will work and work well, if given the chance.

"If Legacy is built, it too will become congested, and then what?" she asked. "Is there another highway proposed to ameliorate that congestion? We need an integrated approach - regional rail, bus systems. It's important to offer those choices instead of the continual paving over of our precious wetlands."

While currently dry and covered by weeds, the lands surrounding Legacy are an intricate part of the Great Salt Lake ecosystem.

When the waters rise - as they did in the late '80s - the land acts as a sponge, soaking up water and preventing flooding. It also provides a home to hundreds of varieties of plants and animals.

The Great Salt Lake's wetlands "offer a support system to unique types of plants and animals that you typically don't find in other areas," said Terry Messmer, a wildlife extension specialist at Utah State University. "In some cases, they can be wet all year round. In other cases, some of these areas are only wet during the moisture seasons."

In their supplemental study, UDOT officials say they have studied the highway's impacts up to three miles out from the proposed route. More animals have been looked at and more area covered.

Also, 16 feet have been shaved off the width of the roadway. "It's maybe not a huge difference, but it's what we felt like we could safely do," said Hudachko. "The communities told us very clearly that they wanted the [bicycle and horse] trail. It's an area that we weren't willing to move on."

UDOT will release its supplemental environmental impact study Friday, after which there will be a 60-day comment period. Copies will be available at local libraries and online.

An open house is scheduled for January 7 at the Davis County Fairgrounds. After that, UDOT will respond to the comments and the study will be submitted for federal review.

The U.S. District Court in Salt Lake City will be the last to review whether UDOT has followed its order to more thoroughly review the Legacy Parkway. If everything goes according to plan, Legacy could be constructed by late 2008 or early 2009.

Thomas is confident of the results. "We have studied this thoroughly," he said, "and it's time to get this onto the next step."

nwarburton@sltrib.com

The Legacy Parkway

* What is it? 14 miles of four-lane highway stretching from North Salt Lake to Farmington. The project will cost $468 million and is designed to provide an alternative to I-15 in and out of Davis County.

* Why is it called a "Parkway"? Because along the roadway will be a system of bike and equestrian trails that connect to the Jordan River bike trail. Also, 2,098 acres of wetlands along the Great Salt Lake as mitigation for the environmental impact of the project.

* Why hasn't it been built? In 2001, the Sierra Club, Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson and Utahns for Better Transportation successfully sued to halt construction of Legacy. And the Utah Department of Transportation has been asked to review five issues they studied during an environmental impact study of the roadway, ranging from width of the roadway to impact on wildlife.

* Is the Legacy Parkway the same as the Legacy Highway? No. The Legacy Highway is a 100-mile roadway from Brigham City to Nephi that was proposed by former Gov. Mike Leavitt in 1996.