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Wasatch County
Heber, Midway and Wasatch County

Heber Bypass Road Needs Legislative Funding For Environmental Study

Heber By-Pass Project Study

Heber City, Wasatch County and UDOT all continue to move forward on the Heber Bypass, a proposed road that would take US 40 traffic west of Heber City and reduce the crowding on Heber’s Main Street. The next big hurdle to the project will come in early 2019.

Heber City is feedback from citizens on Main Street improvements through an online survey the link was sent out through the city water bill and is available on the city’s webpage. The city and UDOT are also planning to hold a public input meeting in December.

However, the next major step in the UDOT process is an environmental study of the proposed road. The involved parties will be asking the Utah state legislature during the 2019 session to fund the environmental study. Matt Parker program manager with UDOT explains what the study would look at.

“Bit of an iterative process to be able to try to mitigate or try to find ways to reduce your impacts.” Parker said, “There are competing interests there’s historic, there’s environmental justice and there’s parks and there’s obviously the wetlands and endangered species. So, we’re looking at all these different things as we try to go through a design and we try to find the least impactful design of them all. If you do that process correctly you should be able to navigate all of those at the same time and kind of show how you’re reducing the impacts. You eventually come up with an answer or a recommendation and then you present it forward. It’s a pretty robust process, it’s a good process.”

Heber’s Mayor Kelleen Potter says that a few different projects are being held up without a firm plan on the bypass route.

“We have so many different things going on at the same time with changes in a master plan for the airport, major decisions on the sewer farm, Heber Light and Power we have a power line going in.” Mayor Potter continued, “A lot of the things that we’re doing are kind of hinging on where this route is going to be established. So, we are hoping that we can get that funding for the environmental study even though that takes some time to do at least we’d be closer to having a route that was sort of established and understood. Then other planning process would have that information to be able to plan around that. So that’s my hope that we’ll be able to help the legislature understand that. It’s not necessarily about getting that road in immediately because I know that there’s a process, and time frame and data but we really need to know where it’s going to go.”

A bypass has been considered in the area since the 90’s, and Wasatch County and Heber have begun purchasing land for the road since that time.

“No, we don’t have all the land there’s still more needed.” Mayor Potter explained, “I guess that’s one of the concerns we’ve purchased land and we’re hoping that will be the place. If the environmental study will not support it then we’ve got to sell that land and get other land and just move in a different direction. but we’re hoping that we can confirm that is a route that will be acceptable to the environmental study and the planning study.”

Mayor Potter says that if the environmental study rejects the planned route they would likely only need to tweak part of the parkway route.

“If it did it would likely be because of the wetlands and it would be a section on the north.” Mayor Potter said, “The rest of it shouldn’t be. Unless there’s some buried treasure that we aren’t aware of or some artifacts it would likely be the wetlands on the north. Most likely they would give us an alternate route within that area maybe a little closer to the city maybe on an established dirt road.”

Mayor Potter hopes that moving the environmental study forward will not only benefit traffic but also the vibrancy of Main Street.

“There’s a lot of moving parts, there’s a lot of decisions to be made.” Mayor Potter continued, “Obviously, we don’t have funding yet for the environmental study or for the actual bypass road, which will likely be called a parkway. Because of where we are and the demand for people living here, the growth, we’re hoping that this will be coming in the near future. It’s really important to hear form the public, whether its on the survey or whether they’re coming to these meetings. Its important for the legislature and for all the decision makers to realize that this is something the community wants. Not just the ability to get up and down Main Street but for the vibrancy and the future of our community.”

KPCW reporter David Boyle covers all things in the Heber Valley as well as sports and breaking news.
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