WITH inland port

Spanish Fork Inland Pork (port)?

WITHOUT inland port

On Monday, July 17th in the new Spanish Fork Library Hall, the non-pubic Utah Inland Port Authority is planning to approve a project to construct yet another controversial “inland port,” a name for a mega warehouse/transportation/shipping/industrial/trucking hub. This time the inland port (some call them “inland porks” as is pork barrel) is planned for Spanish Fork, toward the southern end of Utah County. The port, approved last Tuesday by the Spanish Fork City Council, is initially designed to cover 2,200 acres, consisting largely of irreplaceable, high-quality farmland and wetlands, only about two miles from Utah Lake. Residents of Spanish Fork, including Dr. James Westwater, Chair of the Utah Valley Earth Forum (UVEF.org), are very concerned that the people of their city and residents of other communities in Utah Valley are “largely unaware of the project.” The other concern is mainly for the health and well-being of residents, the environment, and the quality of life in Spanish Fork and other communities in Utah Valley. Residents like Westwater are fearful that harmful air pollution generated in the construction, operation and subsequent expansion of the port will adversely affect present and future residents.

According to Dr. Brian Moench, of Utah Physicians for a Health Environment, “Wasatch Front air pollution already shortens residents’ lives by two to three years, and can precipitate or aggravate virtually all the same diseases known to be caused by smoking—lung, heart, and brain diseases, pregnancy complications like miscarriages, birth defects, and still births, multiple types of cancer, and even diseases like diabetes and arthritis.” He is concerned that more air pollution will threaten virtually every aspect of public health for the entire community.

Westwater is also concerned by the likelihood of increased truck and automobile traffic, congestion, increased costs to the public for port-related infrastructure and two new I-15 interchanges. He warns of the loss of farmland and the rural way of life, loss of important wetlands and wildlife habitat, increased air and noise pollution from vehicular, train and plane traffic, as well as increased summer temperatures from paving over farms and wetlands. Mary Meyer, CEO of the Timpanogos Nation, has expressed deep concern that Native burial sites and artifacts in the port area should be examined, respected and preserved. What also deeply concerns residents such as Dr. Westwater, is that the whole inland port (what he calls an “inland pork”) project seems to be intentionally flying under the radar since neither Spanish Fork City nor the private Utah Inland Port Authority has conducted and made very public a thorough, rigorous, independent study of the environmental and human health consequences of the proposed port and its likely subsequent expansion. Westwater says, “It is also not clear to most residents of Spanish Fork that such a large warehouse/shipping/industrial/trucking hub is needed or necessary for Spanish Fork.”

There are residents of Spanish Fork, of Utah Valley and elsewhere in Utah who believe that the Utah Legislature created  and funds the non-public Utah Inland Port Authority primarily as a way of using public tax dollars to promote and help finance private commercial developments that make developers wealthier, often at the expense of public and environmental health. Dr. Westwater says description for this kind of effort is another “boondoggle foisted on Utah.” A boondoggle is defined as “(1) work   or activity that is wasteful or pointless but gives the appearance of having value, (2) a public project of questionable merit that typically involves political patronage and graft, and (3) [to] waste money or time on unnecessary or questionable projects.”