Legacy hearings planned

FARMINGTON — The Utah Department of Transportation now says it can complete the 14-mile Legacy Parkway in southern Davis County by late 2008 or early 2009.

That is if no one files suit over UDOT's forthcoming, revised plans to build the four-lane, I-15 bypass.

That projection could be a bit optimistic. But more will be known Dec. 3 when UDOT unveils the draft supplemental environmental impact statement (SEIS) it has been working on for the past two years.

"We always work first through the public process," said Marc Heileson, a spokesman for the Sierra Club, one of the plaintiffs in a successful lawsuit that resulted in a temporary shutdown of the Legacy project more than two years ago by the U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals.

"But the court decision was very stern, it was very serious, and if they don't uphold to those concerns, we will follow this till the end. The Sierra Club has always stated that we will go to the mat on the Legacy Highway."

Before any legal wrestling begins, UDOT will go to the public. When the draft SEIS is released Dec. 3, a 60-day comment period will begin with copies of the plan — a document expected to be several inches thick — available at local libraries. A large-scale public hearing and simultaneous open house is planned for Jan. 13 at the Davis County Fairgrounds.

With a crowd of more than 1,000 expected to attend, UDOT plans to use three buildings at the fairgrounds to accommodate everyone who wants to see or participate in the hearing. UDOT is holding the open house in a building adjacent to where it is holding the public hearing to allow residents to make comments directly to UDOT representatives without standing up in front of a crowd.

"Any time you do an EIS, you've got to have at least one public meeting (before the first draft is released), and we have gone far and above that," UDOT spokesman Tom Hudachko said. "Then we put together . . . a committee that was all stakeholders who were directly impacted, the regulatory agencies and the plaintiffs, so they've been very involved."

But not everyone feels that has been the case.

"We've actually been a little frustrated" with UDOT, Heileson said. "The meetings that were held, actually a year ago November, we haven't had a lot of our questions answered from those meetings where we were supposed to be an interested party and working together."

Roger Borgenicht of Utahns for Better Transportation recently sent the Federal Highway Administration a letter asking for those answers.