During the Wednesday July 10 Interlocal Meeting at the Senior Citizen Center, UDOT presented the next steps for the environmental study of the Heber Valley Parkway with government officials and public attendees from Wasatch County, Heber City, Wallsburg and Midway. Brandon Weston discussed the timing of the study with councilman Danny Goode.
“It could be less than a year, or it could be five years.” said Weston when asked about the timeline. Danny Goode interjected, “Three to five is the range we were given, is there a possibility there could be fewer than three, and if so, what’s the likelihood of that?” Weston said, “Well, you know, it’s going to depend. So we are going to define the need, which has been touched on, through the planning process, right. Through that need we are going to identify potential alternatives and depending on what those alternatives touch. Is it wetlands, is it homes, these other things that are protected? So it’s those other processes that might drive passed a year, so without being able to project a future in which alternatives are going to be looking at its hard to answer. Ideally if we didn’t impact any protected resources it could be a year.”
Weston did emphasize that their guiding principles for any project include defining the need, avoid, minimize and mitigate meaning their hope when constructing roads is not to interfere with houses, destroy property or plants or animals, but to determine the best course of action for the community. He also stated that taking no action is also an option, meaning they would consider not building a bypass road if the environmental study came back with data to support that direction. UDOT will proceed into the identification phase of the environmental study. $4 million dollars have been set aside by UDOT to complete the environmental study. For more information go to EnvisionHeber.com
