An interlocal group of elected officials from Heber, Midway, Wasatch County and the school district met last week to discuss shared goals for the bypass.
Wasatch County Manager Dustin Grabau said leaders are trying to compress their discussions into a letter to UDOT.
“It basically outlines some priorities that those representatives feel are kind of universal across all of these entities: about making sure that the bypass preserves our rural character and minimizes its impacts while optimizing the benefit to the Heber City area,” he said.
Heber City councilmember Yvonne Barney presented a draft letter at the interlocal meeting, but now it’s back with each individual agency for proposed edits.
The UDOT bypass letter is a topic on both the Heber and Midway city councils’ agendas Tuesday, July 16, as well as the Wasatch County Council’s meeting agenda for Wednesday, July 17. Councilmembers in each body will discuss whether they want to recommend any changes before signing the letter.
Grabau noted the county council passed a resolution several weeks ago stating support for UDOT’s bypass process.
“This is in the same vein of expressing support and wanting to move forward – but doing it in a way that minimizes its impacts,” he said.
In particular, numerous county leaders have worried aloud about possible impacts on the valley’s open space.
UDOT is still in the process of identifying the best place for the road. Its decision relies on the results of a traffic study predicting congestion in the Heber Valley years into the future.
But its work has been complicated by a recent conservation easement approved for a large swath of the North Fields. The easement includes federal funding, and now UDOT must work with the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) to determine how its proposed routes are affected.
“We’ve been hoping to hear an update for the last several weeks,” Grabau said. “We have not heard anything for the last couple of months, but I know that they [UDOT] are working with the NRCS and other entities to identify a path forward.”
UDOT has said a route decision won’t be made until at least the end of this year.
