Utah’s political movement has a thing for streets. Call it an obsession, maybe even an obsession, but state leaders are doing everything they can to satisfy their burning engine mind.
In the past, this push has led to roads being plowed into areas considered wilderness and paved in national parks without permission, while National Park Service gates protecting fragile ecosystems have been deliberately destroyed. Sagebrush Rebel and infamous gubernatorial candidate Phil Lyman led a bunch of gun-toting yahoos in off-road vehicles in an area that was closed to traffic to protect cultural sites—all to make a point.
Recently, Utah officials have turned to the legal system in an effort to revoke national monument designation, revoke environmental protections, and block travel management programs by international organizations that they say discriminate against fossil fuel engines. Just last week, Governor Spencer Cox and other lawmakers announced they were filing a lawsuit to seize 18.5 million acres of public land—that is, land owned by all Americans, not just Utah Republicans. Their main catch? They say they can no longer enter those areas as the local authorities have closed a number of traffic routes.
A low-profile area in the southwest corner of the state shows what Utah might end up doing with those areas if this grab goes through: Build more roads and across it.
In early August, Washington County—one of the fastest-growing counties in the country—filed a federal lawsuit seeking to short-circuit the Bureau of Land Management’s review of a proposed four-lane highway through the Mojave desert tortoise area at Red Cliffs National Conservation. The area north of St. George and reinstated the Trump administration’s approval of the project, which the courts found insufficient. The county says the new transit system is needed to accommodate the growth. But the real goal, as it often is, is to encourage more growth and development—to preserve the motoring industry and to create another monument to America’s automotive culture.
[Photo: Bureau of Land Management]
The story of the Northern Corridor Highway begins in the mid-2000s, when the late Republican Senator from Utah Bob Bennett and Democratic Representative from Utah Jim Matheson (yes, Utah used to elect Democrats to national office) worked to sell a deal that would grow. the protection of certain BLM lands in exchange for other federal parcels to local governments to accommodate the unprecedented sprawl of Washington County. The legislation, which was eventually passed as part of the Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009, was a landmark compromise that seems unlikely in retrospect, given Utah’s extreme public lands politics. And, of course, Bennett—who has played a role by almost any measure—was ousted by Mike Lee the following year for being too moderate.
The law created the Red Cliffs National Conservation Area on about 45,000 acres of public land north of St. George, he protects the habitat of turtles from manufacturing plants and so on. Today, this country is a haven in the middle of the spectacle, where locals can escape the endless proliferation of cookie-cutter houses, lawns, golf courses, shopping centers, malls, and asphalt-sea parking lots.
The omnibus bill also directed the BLM to identify “one or more northern transportation routes in the county” in response to Washington County’s numerous efforts to eliminate new roads around St. George, without making any exceptions that would allow it to build that road through the conservation area. In 2016, when the BLM released a resource management plan for the conservation area, it rejected Washington County’s proposal to include a trail through it—seemingly killing the plan for good.
But when Donald Trump was elected president, the county and the Utah Department of Transportation seized the opportunity to apply for the right of way to build a 4.5-mile, four-lane highway on the northern edge of the conservation area and the nearby BLM. , and state territories.
In January 2021, the BLM of the Trump administration approved the right of way, although its analysis agreed that it would destroy the habitat of the turtle, spread invasive species, and in fact cut off the southern limit of the conservation area, destroy trails and harm recreation. experience. Conservation groups sued the BLM, and the agency eventually agreed to re-evaluate the environmental assessment. Washington County hasn’t given up, however, and its latest lawsuit is designed to block a new review.
The lawsuit says the road is needed to “meet Washington County’s transportation needs expected to continue to grow through 2050” and reduce related traffic. There’s no doubt that Washington County is growing: About 60,000 people have been added since that 2009 land bill was passed, and its urban sprawl has encroached on the surrounding desert and farmland at a rapid pace. If things continue at this rate, the population will double by 2050, to something like 400,000 people.
If that happens, however, Washington County will have much bigger problems to deal with than increased traffic. St. George’s per capita water use is among the highest in the West, in part due to the abundance of green golf courses. Almost all of that water comes from the rapidly shrinking Colorado River system, and it’s bound to hit hard limits sooner or later. And there isn’t an endless supply of developing land for all the new single-family homes newcomers might need—unless, say, Utah’s congressional delegation can wrest some public land out of the hands of the American people.
In any case, it is not clear how the Northern Expressway will help to “accommodate” the growth of the area. It can be very difficult, accessing areas similar to Red Hills Parkway. It may reduce a few minutes of travel time for people who want to avoid the city of St. George as they ran from taking selfies at Zion National Park to relaxing at the Black Desert resort and golf course.
A smart way to accommodate growth, reduce traffic congestion, and improve the quality of life for current residents and visitors would be to invest in improving and expanding public transportation and revitalizing the urban fabric in a way that accommodates people, not just cars.
But that doesn’t sit well with the ever-present American car spirit, which, sadly, seems so ingrained in Western US culture that any change is likely to be a long time coming. So state after state will continue to waste taxpayer money and energy on putting a 4 mile black spot on a lot of undeveloped land. Why? Because Utah worships its abandoned asphalt idols, the roads. Don’t you believe me? Check out the BLM’s record of the Trump-era Northern Corridor highway lighting, which noted:
The availability of the new road will allow the public to see views of the interior of the NCA beyond what is available only on Cottonwood Springs Road and a handful of existing unpaved trails.
It’s almost as if travel was never invented.
— by Jonathan Thompson, Top Country News
This story was originally published by Top Country News.
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