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- [Narrator] Tonight on "Utah Insight", the Utah Inland Port.

- That the inland port is more important now than I thought it was even two or three years ago.

- [Narrator] The massive shipping hub keeps moving forward.

Lawsuits, protests, studies, nothing has stopped it in its tracks.

- You know what, this is the 11th hour, and we're gonna have to really make of changes in order to save that lake.

- We hear from both sides, (upbeat music) - Welcome to "Utah Insight", I'm Raeann Christensen.

The Utah Inland Port is being built on Salt Lake City's west side.

Development began in 2018 when the legislature created the Utah Inland Port Authority, the process has been contentious, but is moving forward.

So what exactly is an inland port?

Also known as a dry port, it is a distribution hub, much like a seaport importing and exporting cargo, but a dry port is not near the coastline.

It uses air, rail or interstate highways to move goods.

Joining us in the studio, we have Erin Mendenhall, mayor of Salt Lake City, Jack Hedge, executive director of the Utah Inland Port Authority and community activist, Deeda Seed.

Thank you so much for being here tonight.

First of all, I would like to know Jack, why Utah?

Why Salt Lake City?

- Well, it's a great question.

And it's one that has come up repeatedly, but actually it's location.

It's about the intersection, the crossroads of the west.

That is a real thing.

It's the place where the major interstate freeway system, the major rail system and the air system connects the seaport gateways on the west coast with the major distribution markets in the Midwest.

And so, it's like a funnel, everything sort of flows through Utah.

- Mayor, Mendenhall, what does support mean for Salt Lake City?

- That is still being worked out.

And it could mean a great many things.

I think about the future of the course that we're on independent of an inland port.

We're the fastest growing population in the nation between the 2010 and 2020 census.

We have the strongest economy in the nation here in the state of Utah and how we grow matters.

But the way that the inland port develops will be a major piece of that.

It's a third of our city and whether or not there are things like manufacturing jobs versus just simply a distribution center, whether or not these will be developed, which now we have a surety that they will be developed environmentally sound, and that our investments will be directed that way.

And whether or not Salt Lakers will have job opportunities connected to these yet to come jobs in the inland port will determine how beneficial or how detrimental it is.

- Deeda, a lot of people are opposed to the port being built.

What are the main reasons for the opposition?

- Well, one of the main reasons is the air quality impact potentially of all these warehouse distribution centers, being serviced by diesel trucks.

So it's air quality.

There's also destruction of wildlife habitat.

There are water quality and quantity impacts as I think everyone knows by now, Great Salt Lake is in deep trouble.

And we're very concerned about water quantity being reduced by inland port development.

There are the climate change impacts of building all of this infrastructure in the area and their environmental justice impacts because the immediate neighbors who will be most affected by inland port development are among our most diverse and most economically challenged neighbors.

- Jack, air quality.

I think it's on top of mind for everyone here in the Wasatch front, tell me your thoughts.

- Yeah, absolutely.

And with good reason, there are days when the air quality here is the worst in the nation, if not in the world.

Air quality is probably the primary thing that we're focused on trying to address within the port development.

And that really is the basis for having the Port Authority and what the Port Authority brings, because otherwise it will continue to develop to the mayor's point earlier.

It will continue to develop in that area the way it has to this point sort of ad hoc, sort of toward more warehouses, more trucks serve warehousing, those types of things.

So the Port Authority is a vehicle to bring that public purpose and that public benefit to the table here and air quality is job one.

So looking at our infrastructure needs, how do we provide the infrastructure so that zero emissions vehicles can be deployed here and supporting our economy.

How do we create the jobs around the future?

Going to the equity piece that data spoke of, part of that equity is making sure that there are good jobs for those people in those communities that are the most impacted by industrial uses in this area and those jobs for the next for the future.

And the next generation are jobs that are created around servicing and building and maintaining zero emissions vehicles, the infrastructure to support those zero emissions vehicles, renewable energy facilities, those types of things.

And so that's really kind of the focus.

And one of the things that the Port Authority is really working to try to bring to the table are those types of forward looking ideas.

- I know there's been some legal challenges the port is facing between the state and Salt Lake City.

Mayor Mendenhall, can you dive into that a little bit?

Is it still ongoing, when do you expect a resolution?

- Yes, so there is a decision still pending with the Utah Supreme court.

They heard our arguments in April of 2021.

So we are anxiously awaiting, but of course we have no idea exactly when that will come through.

And even though there was monumental, really transformative legislation that I know we'll talk about in the 2022 session, just a few months ago, the causes and the reasons for the lawsuit remain and were really unchanged by the legislation that happened.

There's two primary things that violate Salt Lake City believes the ripper clause in the Utah constitution, which is you can't put a majority unelected board in charge of directing tax increment, and also that you can't make land use decisions.

And the way that the Port Authority is authorized right now through state legislation still prohibits the city or cities from prohibiting certain uses in the area.

And also requires that we allow certain uses.

We've lost our elected, our seat on the board that holds a voting position.

We have a non-voting position held by a wonderful council member, Victoria Petro-Eschler.

She's doing a fantastic job, but she no longer can vote on that board.

So the lawsuit remains and we hope in our leadership at the state that I negotiated the legislation with agree that the Supreme court still needs to make a decision even while we move forward with the progress we've made.

- Deeda, the governor had said that we're delayed on the project going forward because of the board.

They have a new board now, and he said it was full of politicians before, and we didn't need politicians.

Are you more comfortable with who has been elected on the board?

- Well, it's still full of politicians that really hasn't changed.

And this is the third board that we've had in four years.

I think that's wishful thinking on the part of the governor, the essential problem with the Utah Island Port is that it was rushed through in 2018 by the Utah legislature.

And they really hadn't considered what it is, what they were trying to do.

So there's really not, there wasn't a well defined program to start with.

And what we've found in the ensuing years is that the Port Authority hasn't done much.

And then what it has done, we're very concerned about, learning from the newspaper about expenditures that the public is really, was unaware of until this reporting came out.

So we're concerned about this transloading facility that's being proposed.

There's been a lot of conflicting information about what that is.

We're concerned about an issue regarding Patriot rail, a shortline rail that is trying to move its rail yard west of this community called Poplar Grove to reduce train traffic in the community.

And we're concerned about a no bid contract that was for $2 million that was issued by the Port Authority with a company called Keychain.

So we have lots of concerns about how this is all unfolding.

- Okay, do you wanna respond to that, Jack?

- Yeah, I mean and I think, Deeda brings up some good points and some good questions.

I will say, all of those contracts and all of those projects and all those programs that she's referred to were all brought before the board in open public session.

And so, we followed the procedures.

One of the good things I think that the new board is doing is they've called for a legislative audit.

And they're looking at our policies and our procedures that the previous board had approved.

And so are there ways that we can improve?

Are there ways that we can do things better and have more transparency and more clarity for the public and for our elected officials to understand better how things are going?

Hopefully there'll be some good recommendations come out of that.

- I think, I just wanna reiterate that Deeda has a great point about the way that the port came into being in 2018, and it was fraught with politics and worse, it was fraught with individual political relationships that were not very good and that overlay and the way that it was rushed through, and that the product that we received late at the end of the session after 9:30 at night, was not what any of us had expected really set it off on a bad course, but the reason that it's important, we stay at the table and why we've stayed there and I think it's a good thing that our community has stayed at the table is that this could be a better path for us than the one we're on right now.

Right now we have a majority single occupant vehicles and truck deliveries coming and going from the State of Utah, as Jack said, this includes and is adjacent to the concept of using air travel and also upping the rail component.

And when you put goods on rail, the emissions factor is dramatically better.

So in other words, if I move a ton of goods with a diesel truck versus a ton of goods on a train, our emissions are far less when we put it on a train.

So, we know we don't wanna keep growing this state of Utah, just by truck travel.

We've gotta make the transition to more clean and efficient forms of transportation for the goods we produce and the goods we consume.

That's why we have to make sure that this develops that way.

- Okay.

- I've been listening to my stump.

- We also ask community members on social media to port or not port, critics worry the inland port being built on Salt Lake City's west side will have a disastrous impact on air quality in Northern Utah, but proponents claim, there is a way to sustainably develop this area of the city.

What do you think?

How can we balance Utah's economic development with environmental concerns?

Roy Webb says on Facebook, "But proponents claim, there is a way to sustainably develop this area of the city and Utah developers speak this translate as, we're sure we can make a ton of money on this scam and hide the consequences."

I have to say many of the social media comments were similar, not a lot of people in support of the Utah Inland Port.

A big question that many may have is who is actually paying for the port to be built, Jack?

- Well, actually the property owners in the area are paying for the port to be built.

I mean, it is property taxes that they pay to the county that are apportioned to the Port Authority, to utilize.

So tho those property owners are sort of paying their way as they go.

I will say to the social media feeds that you have coming into, we don't, in the broader context of the inland port, we don't see as much of that negative feedback as we see when we in some of these and some of these kinds of things.

And I think to the point that the mayor made, we can do this intentionally, and we can do this with a view to the future and try to address some of the very issues that respondent brought up, or we can let it continue to go the way that it's gone.

I think it's better to be intentional and try to move forward in a broader way.

- So I would just say that over the last four years, we've heard lots of talk about sustainability, but what's happening right now out there is not sustainable.

These warehouses are being built just as any old polluting warehouse.

The promises about sustainability have been put forth regularly yet, we're not seeing any evidence of that happening on the ground.

What we are seeing now is that, and it's not just tax increment.

It's also general appropriations from the legislature.

That money is going into the pockets of developers without anything even to show for example, this 53 million that the Port Authority is talking about, spending on a poorly defined transloading facility, over 2 million has been paid to the Boyer company so far and ground hasn't been broken, nothing has been built the public not withstanding what Jack said about all of us being discussed in public meetings.

We don't have full budget information or information that goes into the packets of board members.

So we're all in the dark.

And I submit one of the reasons that people are so concerned about this project is because of the lack of information.

We're very fearful about the consequences, and we don't have good information honestly, about how the money is being spent.

- Okay, Governor Cox at his latest news conference here on PBS Utah said high end manufacturing in the United States will help supply chain issues, bring jobs to Utah.

And it will especially help rural areas.

- As we've been able to have these conversations with companies, both in Utah and outside of Utah, it's incredible, the manufacturing opportunities that are coming back to the United States.

We've not seen anything like this in probably 40 or 50 years where more and more companies have decided that they're going to move their manufacturing back to the United States, or just going to start manufacturing here.

- The port is being planned for the west side of Salt Lake City, where many of our residents of color and lower income communities live.

Somebody touched on that earlier, mayor Mendenhall, who is representing these communities in the leadership of the inland poor authority and other decision making factors?

- As I mentioned in the last legislative session, Salt Lake City lost its voting position on the Utah Inland Port Authority board.

There is a non-voting board position, which council member Petro-Eschler holds, but there is no direct leadership from the city, but it's really important.

I think that we describe what happened in the legislative session, because it was a transformational shift in the way it's operating.

The city is suing the Inland Port Authority because they took our tax increment and they are not, they were not providing and until we do our contract, not providing enough money to the city to run our basic functions, send police out there, plow their roads, make sure there's lighting, the public utilities are sufficient for the development that's happening.

And so we negotiated a return of our tax increment, whereby we end up committing through a contract with the Inland Port Authority, not this washing machine cycle of every year back into legislation that we will distribute 25% of the future tax increment, as Jack said.

So as the area grows, we draw a baseline from the beginning.

That new growth is what we're talking about, not the basis that helps us run city functions, we'd return 25% of that to the Inland Port Authority, as we do with typical redevelopment project area contracts.

And here's the best part that we divide that increment, we give back to the Port Authority up 40% to environmental research and mitigation projects, 40% back to our west side communities for their benefits associated to the port and 20% for economic development.

And we don't just give it to them.

This contract stipulates how the port requests it of Salt Lake City of our elected officials who are elected by our neighborhoods.

And they determine whether or not the projects they're requesting fulfill the needs of the community.

But first we have to do a study as Deeda brought up, we need to know what the health impacts are.

And we also need to know the traffic situation so that we can be direct in remedying it.

And that's what this first batch of money will go toward is those two studies.

- The Great Salt Lake Audubon has been a part of the Stop the Polluting Port Coalition since it formed, members of the organization feel the inland port is the last thing the area needs on top of a water shortage and the dire state of the Great Salt Lake.

"Utah Insight's", Liz Adeola joined the group's president on the outskirts of where the Utah Inland Port is being developed.

Here's her one-on-one interview that unpacks those issues and unfolds the battles to come.

- I'm Heather Dove and I'm president of Great Salt Lake Audubon.

- I wanna know more about you, how did you get involved?

- It was a gradual process.

I started bird watching in my backyard, and one thing led to another.

- What is it like when you're out there?

And you're just in your element?

What is that like?

What do you feel, what what's going through your mind?

Well, it's a visual delight.

I mean, if you take a look in binoculars, you would be amazed at what you see, the amazing forms and structures and color designs.

And when I am out there, everything sort of becomes in the present moment.

I am ultra sensitive to the sounds, 'cause I'm listening for birds.

I'm ultrasensitive to the light.

- We've heard more trucks here than the birds.

- Oh yes.

And it gets worse over the course of the day.

They're just beginning to roll in.

Every time I come out here, there's another huge warehouse up.

Storm water's gonna be a big problem here because of all the vehicles and chemicals that will be out here and run off from the roads they're building, it's all going into the water and it needs to be adequately filtered because eventually that goes out to the lake.

A lot of these things sound like issues that should have been addressed before the project started.

- Yes, absolutely.

And this has been one of our criticisms, right from the start, there was never a full conceptualization of what this inland port was supposed to be, what it would contain, how it would be built sustainably.

This is a 24/7 operation, especially once it's built out.

It is right on the edge of this tremendous habitat that the birds require and they do not tolerate noise and disturbance well, they flush, they leave.

This lake provides them an incredible array of food sources with its mosaic of different kinds of habitats.

It is part of the Pacific flyway, which is a corridor that migrating birds use from south America to fly all the way to Alaska and other parts of the Arctic.

We have lost so much habitat in the last, especially the last 10 years.

This project is now taking out about 6,000 acres of upland habitat north of I-80.

- What kind of feelings come up, just being in this space?

- I find this very distressing, I think only a small number of people will benefit from this project.

And it's at the cost of our natural resources, our birds, the lake, the environment, the air, our traffic, our way of life.

- [Liz] Does it seem like they just don't care?

- [Heather] I assume, it's all about growth and a big business.

- What's the one thing that you wanna make sure you get across to the people who are watching this, who may not be birds who may not visit the lake quite often.

Why should they care?

- I think people need to really wake up and speak to their legislators and demand that we do this in the absolute most sustainable way possible.

- What's your greatest fear of what will happen if the state and leaders continue to push projects forward like this as it's happening right now?

- This could become unlivable really, it's such an amazing geologic, natural, place, and we're gonna ruin it.

People will really seriously consider moving away.

I know I am.

- Thank you so much for sharing your perspective.

- Thank you.

- A lot to unpack there, Jack, I'm gonna let you respond to that.

Do you guys care about the wetlands and the animals and the wildlife?

- Yeah, absolutely.

And that's the reason I'm here and I think that's the reason why the Port Authority exists because it was developing a pace before the Port Authority ever came on.

The Port Authority has not to date put any money into any of these projects that are going on out there.

We've been working with the city and with others to try to address storm water issues, storm water runoff issue, come up with a master storm water plan for that area out there.

And it's north of I-80 is where there's a huge amount of development and the destruction that Heather talked about.

But south of I-80 those drainages and everything flow into those same areas.

So we need to be addressing it south of I-80 as well.

So we need to take this bigger, more comprehensive view.

And that's what the Port Authority can bring to the table is taking that larger, more comprehensive view, understanding how this works within the entire network of the supply chain, the global supply chain and how important that is to our economy and to be supportive and to keep our economy growing so that we can deal with these issues.

It's much better to deal with these in a growing economy than a declining economy.

And moving, trying to start to disperse away from this area, the intensity of use in this area, that's the whole purpose around having a statewide authority is to look around the state and where can we move cargo to, and how can we use other corridors and other assets around the state to more dispersed and diversify our cargo flows to and through Utah to limit the impacts and reduce the degradation and the impacts on our communities and that environment, incredibly sensitive bird habitat area that's out there.

- So I just wanna push back on that a little bit, Jack wasn't here when the authorizing statute was passed by the legislature, the intent there was not anything to do with environmental sustainability.

It was all about growth and growth as fast as possible.

And even the developers pitch to the legislature was we need public money to build in this difficult area because the soil is very sandy, the water table is high, there's no infrastructure in place already.

And so we need a public subsidy to build these warehouses in a way that is profitable for us.

And even this former speaker of the house, Greg Hughes, put into the bill provision that Salt Lake City couldn't prevent the storage or transfer of natural resources.

And everyone read that as being coal.

Now, it turns out it makes no economic sense to store coal in Salt Lake City, but that was the thinking and the ethic of legislative leaders at that time, they were like, we don't care.

We're gonna try and milk as much money as possible out of this.

And there was no talk about sustainability except, just a tiny little bit of window dressing.

One of the proponents of the project was talking about creating a giant oil tank farm out there, and they were talking about a second enormous rail yard built by the Burlington Northern Santa Fe.

That was the rhetoric and discussion in 2018.

And so, since then, we've seen a shift in how the whole area is described, but we still haven't seen tangible evidence of anything that you can call sustainable development.

As I said earlier, the warehouses that are being built are just the same old warehouses you would find anywhere.

There are no solar panels.

The storm water pollution prevention is not best practice.

It goes on and on.

So the conversation has changed a little bit, but there's still no evidence on the ground that this is in any way sustainable.

- Can I, I've gotta give a third perspective.

- Absolutely, we have about 30 seconds.

So go ahead and mayor Mendenhall, we'll wrap up the show.

- Deeda is right.

Development is happening out there and it can be better.

And if there isn't a coordinating authority, then it will be warehouse development for distribution centers.

There won't be manufacturing jobs, and there won't be a coordinated transportation system, there likely wouldn't be for example, renewable energy charging stations for the future generations of semi trucks that we want to come here.

If there aren't those kind of coordinating factors, then we will continue to have impacting non-beneficial largely warehouse development out there.

And I think that the purpose of the Inland Port Authority, while both of them are valid and have legitimate points here, it can be better.

And that's why we have to keep this conversation going because the track we're on isn't necessarily good for us.

- Okay and I wish we could keep this conversation going, a lot to unpack here, thank you so much for watching "Utah Insight," and we will see you back here next week.

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