Utah Department of Transportation Executive Director Carlos Braceras visited Wasatch County Wednesday evening to address a community divided, speculative and frustrated about his department’s plans to construct a bypass through the Heber Valley. His visit came on the heels of Wasatch County’s Open Lands Board being rejected for federal funding to about 170 acres of the Gertsch family’s land in Heber Valley’s North Fields. In March, the County Council voted to spend $2.3 million of its own conservation funds to use in conjunction with federal funds and contributions from the landowners. Now, after UDOT sent a letter to the federal group responsible for awarding the conservation funds, they’ve been denied.“Utah Open Lands was not sent the letter, but there was a letter regarding our application for funding from the federal farm bill that was from UDOT that talked about the fact that the Gertsch property in particular, if funded, would be interfering with an infrastructure project and that the funding shouldn’t be allocated to it,” said Wendy Fisher, the executive director of Utah Open Lands.     She said the conservation easement attempt in no way delayed the bypass project, despite UDOT officials telling Heber City Council earlier this month that the easement process was one of the reasons they had a pause in their process.Councilor Steve Farell made it clear the county had no intent to impede the process in its conservation attempt.“That federal funding, yes, has been denied, but that also means that we lose the other funding,” she said. “The total funding that we leveraged the county money with was about $10 million. So that is gone at this point.”Fisher said attempts to just delay the process rather than have it denied altogether failed.“My understanding is that if we wanted to try to get that funding, we would have to go through the whole process,” she said. “It would be a brand-new application.”When Braceras arrived at the meeting after the discussion had begun, he was met with frustrations from the county as his department’s ongoing and delayed environmental impact study for the bypass was interfering with the county’s long-planned conservation vision.“Carlos, do you have a plan for us?” Farrell asked.He talked about how UDOT was in the process of building a bypass in the valley back in 1987.“There was nothing there,” he said. “The community went nuts. You didn’t want to lose the business on Main Street.  And I get it. But we kind of lost an opportunity.”He spoke of that as the ideal time to figure some of these concerns out. Now, he said, “the solutions are much more painful.”“We need to do something to try to get the traffic off of Main Street,” he said. “It’s going to painful to the department and painful for the county and painful for the city, because it’s going to involve hard choices.”He said none of the alternatives UDOT has previously released work anymore. And he said they may need to leave a route in the North Fields on the table.He also said that only 25% of the current trips on Main Street are through traffic, and questioned whether reducing the street’s traffic by a quarter would solve the route’s issues.Even with his tough-love answers, he still talked about some options the county could have.He talked about how in 1996 as he built the Legacy Parkway, he was able to preserve almost 1,200 acres.He talked about a possible option with what would likely be one-way frontage roads next to the existing U.S. 40 which would need to be widened and connected to a route that would bypass the town.“Shame on us if we haven’t or if it doesn’t feel like we’ve communicated enough,” Braceras said. “My personal commitment to this council is when you tell me that you’re sick and tired of seeing us, then we’ll back off.”He explained that working through the National Environmental Policy Act procedures can be a difficult process, as some things can’t be disclosed.“We can at least tell you what we can say and what we can’t say,” he said. “The NEPA process is painful, it’s long, but it’s designed to try to flesh out the best answer. And as painful as it is, we usually get to the best answer.”In the case of the bypass, it took too long while the community grew too fast.“I will commit that we will push harder than we’ve done before and we will move faster than we have before,” he said. “It will be tough.”Still, a question remained: How can the county continue their conservation without knowing UDOT’s study timeline or route?While Braceras said UDOT is able to determine likely areas where the bypass will go or won’t go, it can’t hint toward the final determination without compromising the process and invalidating its work.“We always lose those cases,” he said. “We will try to find a place where, as fast as possible, we can nail down the where.”Right now, Braceras said the focus needs to be on either tweaking its previously released alternatives or figure out another viable solution.He said there could be preservation potential through the bypass, though he couldn’t give a solid commitment.“What we need to do is sit down in good faith and look to see if there’s opportunities to accomplish what you’re trying to accomplish,” he said. “My goal here today was to get a sense from the council of, ‘We want to move forward and try to get something done, but knowing so that it’s not going to be easy. But we would be committed to be there.’”The post UDOT chief visits Wasatch County as bypass clashes with conservation attempts appeared first on Park Record.