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SALT LAKE CITY — The Utah Department of Transportation's decision to move forward with a gondola in Little Cottonwood Canyon has sparked more litigation, as two more lawsuits were filed against it Monday.
Salt Lake City, the city of Sandy and the Metropolitan Water District of Salt Lake and Sandy filed a joint lawsuit in federal court, seeking to vacate the record of decision that UDOT filed in July. They are also asking the court to require UDOT to file a new environmental impact statement and federal record of decision that includes more on possible impacts to Little Cottonwood Creek.
The three entities want the new statement to meet the standards required in the Wilderness Act of 1964, the Transportation Act of 1966, and the Administrative Procedures Act. Their lawsuit also names the Federal Highway Administration and U.S. Forest Service as defendants, asserting that the agencies treated the canyon highway as "a regular road through a nondescript setting" and not one that is next to a "critical drinking water source protection area."
Save Our Canyons, a local nonprofit, also filed a separate lawsuit in federal court against UDOT and the Forest Service, arguing that it violates the National Environmental Policy Act and other laws. The group is seeking for UDOT's record of decision to be paused "until the UDOT has fully complied with federal law."
UDOT's plan calls for three phases to handle traffic in Little Cottonwood Canyon, starting with increased bus service and tolling which could begin as early as 2025. The third phase, which has sparked the most intrigue and controversy, is an 8-mile gondola that would deliver riders to Snowbird and Alta ski resorts when it is constructed.
Both lawsuits filed Monday follow one that a pair of nonprofits and a group of residents filed in federal court last week, which seeks to pause the entire project until it fully complies with the same laws outlined in the new litigation. Representatives of the group argue that the project also is too expensive and there are "far cheaper commonsense solutions" to the canyon's traffic problems.
UDOT spokesman John Gleason said the state agency is aware of the lawsuits and officials are currently reviewing them and therefore "cannot comment on specifics."
What the new lawsuits argue
The lawsuit that Salt Lake City and Sandy filed focuses almost entirely on water. The canyon provides a "significant source of drinking water" for residents across the Salt Lake Valley, serving residents in Salt Lake City, Sandy and a handful of other cities, according to the plaintiffs.
The cities say both cities have invested in watershed stewardship projects for more than a century, which they fear could be undone by the transportation project.
"Clean, safe drinking water is not something we take for granted — and we will take every step necessary to ensure this resource is considered and protected for residents throughout the valley," said Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall in a statement, adding that UDOT's record of decision "failed" to properly "evaluate water resource impacts."
The lawsuit states that the overall project may help to "debottleneck" the canyon in the winter, but it would encourage more traffic throughout the year, which they say would have "a large array of environmental impacts." These include risks to water quality, increased demand on limited water supplies, as well as noise and air quality pollution.
In addition, they wrote that the environmental impact statement didn't include any possible impacts made to state Route 209, which feeds into Little Cottonwood Canyon. Sandy Mayor Monica Zoltanski said this route accounts for nearly half of the traffic leading into the canyon.
"With the addition of a 2,500-stall parking structure at the mouth of the canyon, the influx of additional traffic would have a serious detrimental financial and public safety impact on the most environmentally sensitive area of Sandy," she said in a statement.
The plaintiffs claim that similar missteps were made at a handful of places in the canyon, like the Twin Peaks and Lone Peak wilderness areas. They also argue that the federal agencies made "numerous legal and factual errors" in accepting the record of decision.
"Federal defendants in some cases diminished, and in other cases completely ignored, this critical context to the project, in violation of the law," the lawsuit states.
Save Our Canyons cites similar federal laws for its case against UDOT and the Forest Service, saying that the plan was carried out in a "fundamentally flawed and arbitrary process" under the National Environmental Policy Act. The lawsuit states that the planned gondola towers would "irreversibly" scar the canyon and two wilderness areas.
The plaintiff claims the Forest Service also "failed to take a hard look at the impacts" of the project when accepting the record of decision.
What the lawsuits seek to do
All three lawsuits filed this month seek to reverse UDOT's record of decision and have the process redone.
In the Salt Lake City-Sandy case, the plaintiffs are seeking for the statement to be redone with a deeper focus on water impacts before it can move forward because they say the actions can have "potentially significant direct, indirect, and cumulative impacts" on the water quality and supply in the canyon.
Save Our Canyons is seeking to prevent UDOT and the Forest Service from "taking any further actions in furtherance of this project" until "UDOT has fully complied with federal law."
Much like he said last week, Gleason said UDOT is working to implement the plan by the start of the 2025-26 winter, but the rollout could be delayed by legal challenges. The federal agencies included in this lawsuit have yet to comment on it.
Utah Gov. Spencer Cox said last week that the state is "very confident" about how the Little Cottonwood Canyon planning process played out in response to the first lawsuit. He added that the state is looking forward "to having (our) day in court to discuss what happened in that planning process," as well.
