SALT LAKE CITY — After months of work, the Utah Inland Port Authority has released its five-year strategic business plan, which port authority leaders say is a road map for how the port authority will position Utah as a “global leader” in logistics.
“Generations of Utahns planned and sacrificed to put us on the map as the Crossroads of the West,” said Jack Hedge, the port authority’s executive director, in a Thursday news conference presenting the plan. “We think this inland port plan really gives us the guideposts and the framework to be the Crossroads of the World.”
Hedge said the uncertainties and challenges brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic have underscored a need for a Utah Inland Port Authority and “just how fragile the global supply chain is.” Demand for personal protective gear and even basic supplies such as toilet paper has resulted in fracturing of supply chains across the globe.
“The average Utahn now understands, more than ever, just how valuable and important logistics are to our everyday lives,” Hedge said. “Everything we eat, everything we wear, everything we’re sitting on, pretty much depends on and is connected to the global logistics system. ... We have an opportunity here to really make that more efficient, but at the same time more sustainable and more in tune with our communities and our needs here in our area.”
While presenting the plan, Hedge repeatedly emphasized the port authority’s goal is to position Utah as a leader in “revolutionizing global logistics for the next generation” while also creating an environmentally sensitive, green port unlike anything that currently exists in the world — all while reducing impact to air quality and the environment in the port’s 16,000-acre jurisdiction west of the Salt Lake City International Airport.
The goal, he said, is to do business with companies that practice a “triple bottom line approach” — or businesses that balance “people with the planet with profit.”
Electric trucks, electric charging infrastructure, air quality monitoring, dust control, environmental preservation buffer zones and environmentally friendly building standards were some strategies outlined in the business plan, which Hedge said seeks to act as “guideposts” for future development of a Utah Inland Port.
Earlier this month, port authority officials announced a deal struck with Rocky Mountain Power to create a sustainable energy supply within the port authority’s jurisdiction, with a goal to meet future needs with net 100% renewable energy, planning for electrification of freight, cargo and logistics equipment, and energy efficiency programs.
Many aspects of the business plan focus on sustainability and environmental priorities — which comes after the concept of a Utah Inland Port has been vehemently fought by environmental groups and community activists, who have long argued a Utah Inland Port would only bring increased emissions from truck and rail traffic, as well as environmental damage to nearby sensitive wetlands around the Great Salt Lake.
Some strategies outlined in the business plan include building “electric vehicle charging and clean energy fueling infrastructure” for commercial trucks and passenger vehicles, the use of “clean-cargo handling equipment,” as well as incentivizing older truck and rail engine upgrades to “zero or near-zero emission technology, equipment retrofits, accelerated replacement, and renewable energy sources,” according to a summary of the plan.
The plan also includes a strategy to “improve traffic and congestion issues” along the Wasatch Front by shifting “increased amounts of cargo originating from and destined for the Wasatch Front from truck to rail,” while focusing on improving rail services dispersing cargo to “satellite” port locations in rural Utah, and incentivizing “smart, clean energy” by developing “incentives to move toward the implementation of renewable energy sources.”
Another strategy laid out in the plan is to “coordinate protection of wildlife, habitat and wetlands” by “working with local groups, government, and private landowners to protect wildlife, habitat and wetlands such as creating buffers from industrial development,” promoting sustainable building standards to reduce bird collision risk, using native plants, and “advancing sustainable landscaping practices that enhance habitat.” That’s in addition to working with local government to use “green-stormwater infrastructure” through rain gardens, green roofs, porous pavement and other stormwater collection strategies.
The strategic plan — which is slated to be considered by the Utah Inland Port Authority board at its first meeting in months, scheduled for Wednesday — is meant to guide future decision-making as the board develops the port over the next five years.
The plan, however, didn’t impress Utah Port Authority’s loudest critics.
The group Stop the Polluting Port issued a news release shortly after the plan was released, criticizing it for lacking answers to “critical questions” like how many new trucks, airplane trips and train trips the port would bring to the Wasatch Front, how much new construction dust and pollution, and specifically how other “profoundly negative impacts that have plagued other inland ports will be prevented in this one?”
“The newly released plan is filled with a lot of words like ‘sustainable,’ ‘renewable energy,’ ‘zero-emissions,’ ‘clean technologies,’ and ‘monitoring,’ but otherwise gives us no actual information,” Brian Moench, president of Utah Physicians for a Health Environment, said in a prepared statement.
“It gives us no reason to reconsider what has been obvious since the beginning. This inland port will bring a lot more pollution and dirty energy into the Salt Lake Valley, and is exactly the wrong direction for our economic future.”
Deeda Seed, a campaigner with the Center for Biological Diversity and a lead organizer with Stop the Polluting Port, said the business plan describes “much of the harm the port will bring but lacks commitments to legally binding remedies.”
“What is clearly stated in the ‘plan’ is that it’s all dependent on public financing of private business interests, such as Rio Tinto,” Seed said. “And what that means is that we, the taxpayers, are subsidizing the harm to our communities.”
But Hedge and Utah Inland Port Authority Board Chairman James Rogers, who is also a Salt Lake City councilman who represents a west-side district of Salt Lake City, say the port authority is positioned to guide a better future for the area — one that already hosts shipping warehouses, a Union Pacific intermodal facility, and thousands of daily truck trips, and is slated to grow with or without an inland port.
“The scary thing is if we do nothing,” Rogers said.
To help draft the business plan, port officials used data from a variety of sources to estimate current and future conditions of the port jurisdiction, as well as future scenarios for development, according to a summary of the plan’s methodology. Those included the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute for population estimates, Utah Department of Environmental Quality for natural resources and air quality data, and data from the Utah Department of Transportation, the U.S Federal Highway Administration, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and other organizations for truck GPS data for trade and cargo movements.
Hedge said the Utah Port Authority’s future must be “data-driven” and based on “sound public process.” The strategic business plan is a “guiding principles document for the way we will make decisions in the future,” he said.
The specifics and decisions of how the Utah Inland Port is developed is up to the Utah Inland Port Authority board, which hasn’t met in months as the business plan was being drafted. The board will review the business plan in its meeting next week, and is expected to adopt a final version of the plan in another meeting expected in June.
Following a pattern of protests at previous meetings, the port board’s last meeting in October was disrupted by protesters, preceded by a string of other protests, including the storming of the Chamber of Commerce Building in July that resulted in violent clashes with police and the arrests of eight people.
The group Stop the Polluting Port has criticized port officials for moving forward despite the pandemic, which has moved public meetings online. Port officials say the public will have ample opportunity to give feedback on the strategic business plan before its approval.