Is public activism knocking the inland port off track? No. We don’t even know where the track is yet.
Rep. Gregg Buxton, R-Roy, a legislator on the the Inland Port Authority Board, says the public is “beating the hell out of us” at the board’s meetings. “And it’s mostly about air quality. It’s mostly about, you know, truck traffic and being able to make everything work.”
The horror of constructive public feedback. That whole “being able to make everything work” sounds like a lot to demand.
Buxton’s report this week prompted the new speaker of the Utah House, Brad Wilson, to raise the idea of new legislation in the name of hurrying the port along.
This is a page out of the Trump create-a-crisis playbook. The idea of an inland port has been kicked around for years, and it will be years before any shipping container arrives.
The head of the port authority board isn’t even planning on asking the Legislature for more money in the January session. That is because they are waiting for a consultant’s report that won’t come until sometime next year.
It’s not the public holding this up. The reality is that the people behind this don’t know what it is yet. They keep comparing it to Kansas City, but Kansas City has something Salt Lake City never will — a river to the sea.
In this case, Utah has to negotiate a deal with a West Coast port to load and unload but otherwise not process cargo. There apparently isn’t another inland port we can model for that. And the closest we’ve ever come is the deal for port capacity to ship coal through Oakland, which turned into a heap of trouble and not a stocking’s worth of coal shipped.
What would Utah have to pay or promise to get such a deal? The consultants are supposed to tell us.
Then there’s air quality, which, if it isn’t respected, will become a deal killer. The Wasatch Front already regularly exceeds federal air quality standards, and adding hundreds of diesel engines and jet flights would have predictable consequences.
If the port does face a lawsuit, it likely will be over the fact that the valley would further exceed those standards if the port is developed. The state is trying to head off federal intervention by preparing its own environmental report. It remains to be seen if that will work. Seems like now is the time for the public to be speaking up.
If Speaker Wilson wants to hurry the port along, air quality should be his top priority. It would take large reductions elsewhere to offset the tonnage an inland port would pour into the valley. The port authority board can’t do that, but the Utah Legislature can.
The idea of an inland port is worth pursuing, but it is arrogant to think it’s too late for a robust public conversation. In fact, that conversation is just beginning, waiting for a more concrete idea of what is being asked of Utahns — in dollars and asthma rates.
If legislators want to get the public off their backs, they need the public to respect their performance. Whining doesn’t help.