St. George • Environmental groups filed a lawsuit challenging the Northern Corridor highway on Wednesday, two weeks after the federal government reapproved the controversial project through critical habitat for the threatened Mojave desert tortoise.
Conservation groups, including Conserve Southwest Utah and the Center for Biological Diversity, are suing the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for “violating multiple federal laws” in approving the four-lane road through the Red Cliffs National Conservation Area, according to a news release.
“Our community has repeatedly made clear that better traffic solutions exist and that they oppose a highway through what should be protected lands,” Stacey Wittek, director of Conserve Southwest Utah, said in a statement. “Given that UDOT is wasting no time moving forward with ground-distributing activities, we had to act to stop this illegal project.”
The Utah Department of Transportation has begun staking the right-of-way with wood lath strips, Kirk Thornock, director of UDOT’s southern Utah region, told The Tribune last week.
This lawsuit continues a long saga over the polarizing highway in Washington County that was first proposed in 2006. The federal government first approved the right-of-way at the end of President Donald Trump’s first term in 2021. Environmental groups — including the same ones that are suing this week – sued over the project. The Biden administration later overturned the approval and proposed upgrading existing roads to ease traffic in the growing region.
Washington County Commissioner Adam Snow told The Tribune that the Biden administration’s reversal of the highway was “wholly political.” Environmental groups expressed similar sentiments about the Trump administration’s recent reapproval.
“This is narrow-minded, short-term thinking, and the BLM has clearly caved to local and state political pressure with this decision,” said Chris Krupp, Public Lands Attorney for WildEarth Guardians, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit.
Washington County leaders have said the highway is necessary to alleviate current and projected traffic in the growing county.
Meanwhile, drought, habitat fragmentation and wildfires have put pressure on the threatened Mojave desert tortoise, according to the Fish and Wildlife Service.
This is a developing story.