The Polluting Port Plans to Construct a $256 million Trans-loading Facility Funded by Tax Dollars
The legislature and the Utah Inland Port Authority (UIPA) are working feverishly to smother us with more air pollution and our democracy at the same time. This is their latest scheme to do both.
The legislature voted to allow an unelected board, UIPA, to create a new public infrastructure district that could establish a bond to create a train to truck and truck to train transloading facility at the inland port using a bond, i.e. public money. This would use public money to subsidize all the businesses at the port; and the people making all the decisions would be another, unelected, unaccountable board. The bottom line would be one unelected board creates another unelected board, and you have to pay for making the inland port viable.
Jack Hedge, in his position as director of UIPA, is a terrific salesperson, and he is trying to sell everyone on the idea that the port will actually decrease our air pollution by decreasing truck traffic. That idea is fantastical thinking, wildly at odds with the experience of every other inland port in the country. It is also counter to the very purpose of the port, which is to bring a new, massive amount of shipping and processing of goods (meaning: air pollution from multiple new sources) to Salt Lake that aren’t coming here now.
In short, this is another phase of the inland port scam that will aggravate the climate crisis, increase our air pollution, will make a few company CEOs rich, and you’re going to pay for it all, literally and figuratively.
