Another issue with UDOT’s gondola plan for Little Cottonwood Canyon
While at the surface level, a gondola may sound like it would have a positive effect on air quality, the plan for the gondola in Little Cottonwood Canyon only promotes environmental degradation, and subsidizes wealthy ski resort stakeholders.
UPHE has been opposing the gondola for a number of reasons.
1. We all love the beauty of our mountains: they provide a much needed retreat from urbanization. The aesthetic beauty of the canyon is an invaluable public health asset and the reason it attracts so many visitors. That asset would be permanently, irreparably degraded by the gondola towers, with 40 poles, each 15 feet in diameter, serviced by new roads big enough for huge trucks, as it cuts through the wilderness of Little Cottonwood Canyon.
2. The average person will be priced out of using the gondola.
3. Because it only services two sites, Alta and Snowbird, it is at its core a public subsidy for ski industry corporations.
4. Global warming is almost certain to make the ski industry collapse within the next two decades.
5. The digging, blasting, and land disruption associated with tower construction is almost certain to be a source of water contamination for decades, and will diminish the canyon watershed.
6. With UDOT stating as its priority “travel reliability,” we believe UDOT is badly out of step with the public. UDOT says it has received 14,000 public comments already and took that into consideration. But UDOT has not disclosed how many of those comments oppose the gondola. We believe the overwhelming majority of them oppose it.
7. The gondola stands to make a few well-connected, ethically compromised land owners rich, but will do little to reduce traffic congestion and improve air quality, especially at the mouth of the canyon. There are much better alternatives to improving air quality, and spending well over half a billion dollars.
Aside from these reasons, a land ownership conflict has now come to light. “According to plans in UDOT’s draft environmental impact statement (EIS) — which was made public in August — a tower for the proposed gondola would be situated just below the church’s secretive Granite Mountain Records Vault” a Salt Lake Tribune article reports.
The church has not yet commented on if they’ll agree to UDOT’s plans. The Tribune article includes the opinions of other faith-based leaders, such as Jean Hill. The director of the Catholic Diocese’s Office of Life, Justice & Peace, told Fox 13 back in September, “The gondola is not an option for the poor and using that kind of state funding, for an option that will not benefit anyone who is low income, seems like a pretty poor use of taxpayer funds to us.”
The gondola proposal includes a plan for 22 towers, standing 164 feet tall, sprawling up the beloved local canyon.
UDOT is reviewing public comments and we are awaiting their travel plan recommendation. Thanks to all who made comments, but the battle is not over yet. Please call the Governor’s office at 801-538-1000 to let him know the public is opposed to this plan.