Late last December, however, after the Draft SEIS was released, new Legacy Project Director John Thomas graciously approached several of us with an offer to discuss our proposal in more detail. Despite the fact that this offer came during the relatively short window in which we must be preparing our detailed public comments, we agreed to meet with him and one of the project consultants last Monday, January 24. Within a week of that meeting, we arranged to fly our consultants out for more detailed discussions. Despite the promise of these meetings, however, just a matter of days later Mr. Njord and Mr. Braceras made a series of statements to the legislature and the news media that could serve only to poison the new discussions and to re-incite the unfortunate tenor that has characterized this issue. As one example of the very regrettable consequences of this behavior, Representative David Cox responded by accusing us of "financial terrorism."

The motives for UDOT's behavior this week are difficult to comprehend. Perhaps UDOT's leadership is not really interesting in evaluating our proposal seriously, and thus seeks to undermine discussions before they even begin. Perhaps, given that they need to seek hundreds of millions of dollars more for their proposed project than they initially estimated, they badly want to divert blame for the project's exorbitant price tag to anyone but themselves. As explained below, however, UDOT bears responsibility for the financial fiasco surrounding the Legacy delays and litigation:

• All of the objections that led to the Legacy litigation were raised fully during the public process when the project was first considered. Rather than taking our concerns seriously, UDOT and the federal agencies responsible for reviewing the project brushed them aside, essentially forcing us to seek judicial review, as the law allows.

• Before the final project decision was made, EPA's Regional Administrator in Denver met with Governor Leavitt and later sent him a letter expressly warning him that UDOT faced serious "litigation risks" if it proceeded with the project without further analysis and potential modifications. UDOT unwisely chose to ignore that clear warning.

• UDOT chose to proceed with actual construction even while the project was being challenged in court. This was extremely unwise, and was the factor most responsible for the penalty fees incurred by the state. They decided to gamble with public funds, lost that gamble, and now try to shift blame for that error of judgment.