Inland port darkens Utah’s future

Utah News Dispatch published an op-ed from UPHE president and co-founder, Dr. Brian Moench, on the frightening future of Utah if the Inland Port continues.

Full op-ed:

Utah’s future quality of life is being decided right now by just a handful of people behind closed doors, and it’s not who you think. They are the Utah Inland Port Authority (UIPA) and they have been empowered by the legislature to launch a complete “makeover” of life along the Wasatch Front.

Development in the Salt Lake City Port area. Photo by David Jackson Photography.

Under the premise that more and more economic and population “growth” is imperative, and the faster the growth the better, UIPA is handing out taxpayer subsidies to well-connected developers to fast track the construction of large warehouse farms they euphemistically call “project areas.” UIPA’s goal is to create logistics centers that massively increase the number of goods being imported and exported from the state, including siphoning off business from West Coast ports. With a magic wand, instant economic nirvana!

Well not so fast. Volunteers from the Stop the Polluting Port Coalition (SPPC) raised money for an analysis of the business model of Utah’s inland port “transloading facility,” the heart of the original port planned for Salt Lake City, by one of the nation’s premier experts on West Coast ports. He said in a detailed, 53 page analysis that UIPA’s business model is not viable. In short, the Intermountain West isn’t a big enough market to attract business from major importers, and Utah’s service-based economy doesn’t offer much for exports.

Rail doesn’t always mean less emissions. A port, however, always means increased emissions.

The first iteration of the port floundered for the very reason he identified. The collapse of the transloading scheme has resulted in taxpayers being forced to continue paying huge renting fees on vacant lots to these deep pocketed developers for absolutely nothing. A second iteration was quickly inserted in its place — multiple smaller ports scattered throughout the state. But the original fatal flaw will not be cured by breaking up the port pie into smaller pieces.

Utah’s unemployment rate is 2.8%, essentially full employment. Most of the jobs in other inland ports are low paying warehouse fulfillment jobs with no benefits. In 2020, Amazon warehouse employees were on food stamps in nine states. Even those will soon evaporate with the inevitable arrival of robotics and automation.

Furthermore, California is preparing to spend $30 billion on a complex of four inland ports in its Central Valley that are designed to ease the pressure on the California seaports. These projects would be far more viable than one in Utah, because they are all going to be located within 100 miles of their parent seaport, will be located in an import market 10 times the size of the Intermountain West, and will have a high volume of agricultural exports to balance their roles as import distributors. Still more “ports” are being planned in Nevada, Arizona, and Denver, Colorado — competition that will further erode any chance that Utah’s port network can succeed.

But if by some miracle UIPA’s strategy does succeed, get ready for more air pollution from just about every source — cars, trucks, airplanes, trains, and smoke stacks, and more dust from Great Salt Lake.

Utah doesn’t need subsidies for increasing pollution.

UIPA boasts their “project areas” will decrease air pollution by shifting product movement from trucks to trains. In California, per ton of goods shipped, trucks are cleaner than trains, and by 2030, will be about four times cleaner. But UIPA’s entire premise is their ports will attract a massive increase in product shipment through Utah — imports and exports — and that means more emissions from just about every type of transportation, nearly all of which will come from fossil fuel combustion. Mega-warehouse farms in other states are not nicknamed “diesel deaths zones” because they cleaned up community air pollution.

Furthermore, rail yards are hardly cleaner than truck depots. Transfer of a shipping container to and from a train in a rail yard requires a diesel “switcher” engine, usually the most polluting engines in operation, spewing diesel exhaust 24/7. A loophole in the Clean Air Act allows locomotives to remain in operation indefinitely, and many are 60-70 years old. Bringing more rail yards and ports to Utah’s communities will hardly improve anyone’s air quality or quality of life. As one resident living along the BNSF Railway in the San Francisco Bay Area said, “Nobody wants to live next to a railroad track. You move next to a railroad track because you don’t have other options.”

UIPA’s project areas will smother 50,000 acres of Utah Lake and Great Salt Lake wetlands with seas of asphalt and concrete. You cannot save Great Salt Lake by amputating its wetlands.

Finally, UIPA flaunts another reality — water consumption. Joliet, Illinois, home to the largest inland port in the country, through which about 4% of U.S. gross domestic product flows, is running out of water because of the logistics industry. And they are not in a desert. Last year, Amazon, Dollar Tree, DHL, Interstate, and Home Depot, just 2% of all the warehouses in the county, used 20.5 million gallons of water. Water consumed by a network of Utah ports will almost certainly be stolen from Great Salt Lake. Even conservative lawmakers recognize the potential catastrophe.

UIPA is taking control of the quality of life on the Wasatch Front, much to the delight of a handful of corporate developers. As for everyone else, we will all suffer the consequences.