By Michelle L. Price
Associated Press
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) - Utah officials have set their sights on a new state prison location, turning the focus now to whether the site near wetlands and Salt Lake City’s soon-to-be-revamped airport will earn the approval of lawmakers and the governor and pass environmental muster.
Utah’s Prison Relocation Commission says the western Salt Lake City site won’t interfere with the airport and officials are confident that engineers and architects can overcome any geologic or environmental challenges.
Gov. Gary Herbert, who has not yet endorsed the location, is expected to call lawmakers into a special session as soon as next week to consider whether the land should house the $550 million new prison, which would hold about 4,500 inmates.
Salt Lake City opposes the move, and city officials are threatening a lawsuit to block the prison.
Lawmakers on the prison commission say they’re not worried about a lawsuit or whether the move will win the full Legislature’s approval. “We understand the issue, and I think we’ve made the very best possible decision that we could make,” Layton Republican Sen. Jerry Stevenson said after the commission’s vote on Tuesday afternoon.
The prison is now in the Salt Lake City suburb of Draper. Supporters of the move say the facility, built in 1951, needs more space and updates and is taking up valuable land as several high-tech companies have moved in nearby.
But Salt Lake City’s mayor and City Council argue the site in their city is a bad fit. Mayor Ralph Becker said he’s meeting with city lawyers to discuss a possible lawsuit. At a news conference Tuesday, Becker did not offer details about the legal challenge and a message left with his office Wednesday was not immediately returned.
City officials worry the prison would sit on sandy soil that could be disastrous in an earthquake, with buildings sinking and buried storage tanks rising up and breaching the surface.
The site also sits next to an abandoned landfill. Building on and near the landfill runs the risk that groundwater could carry pollutants onto the prison site or to nearby wetlands and southern shore of the Great Salt Lake, city officials warned.
Members of the Prison Relocation Commission say it will be complicated to stabilize the soil and prepare the land for the prison, but it can be done. In the long term, it will be cheapest to operate the prison so close to Salt Lake City’s hospitals, courts and population base, they argue.
Before several years of construction could start, Utah would have to spend about $60 million and 18 to 36 months stabilizing the soil.
Consultants working for the prison commission say they need to do more study on the landfill and how they’ll build around it.
Beyond those issues, Utah will have to study whether a prison would harm shorebirds and burrowing owls in the area.
But commission members say there will be no conflict with the airport 3 miles away, and the nearest homes are about 6 miles out. They say the prison will bring economic benefits like construction jobs, more industrial parks and even cheap inmate labor to help with conservation projects along the Great Salt Lake.
Rep. Brad Wilson, a Kaysville Republican and co-chair of the prison commission, said he’s confident a majority of state lawmakers will endorse the idea when they take it up soon.
Several Democrats representing the left-leaning capital city have already condemned the idea, saying it will curb economic development on Salt Lake City’s west industrial side. “This is a bad decision that will only further sidetrack neighborhoods that are on their way to cultural and economic success,” Rep. Sandra Hollins, D-Salt Lake City, said in a statement late Tuesday.
Members of Keep it in Draper, a group opposed to the move, say they plan to keep fighting it. They’re instead endorsing a plan from Republican Rep. Fred Cox of West Valley City that calls for refurbishing the prison building-by-building where it is now.
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Copyright 2015 The Associated Press.