Nonprofits sue Utah Inland Port Authority, claim inland ports will harm Great Salt Lake

SALT LAKE CITY ( ABC4 ) — Two environmentalist organizations filed a lawsuit Thursday against several Utah politicians and the Utah Inland Port Authority, demanding the court bar the port authority from any future actions.

The Center for Biological Diversity and Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment are suing the Utah Inland Port Authority (UIPA), Gov. Spencer Cox, Senate President J. Stuart Adams, and Speaker Mike Shultz on claims that the UIPA was created unconstitutionally.

They are asking the court to prohibit the port authority from moving forward on any projects and nullify any actions it has taken in the past two years. The UIPA told ABC4 it is looking at possibly filing a counterclaim for defamation.

This lawsuit highlights the already existing controversies and differences of opinion surrounding the development of inland ports across the state of Utah.

What are inland ports?

An inland port, or a port that is not situated near the coast, is an area that includes a facility for transferring goods, according to UIPA’s executive director Ben Hart.

Hart said these projects are meant to foster economic growth and improve the state’s logistics system by increasing trade on rail and air, reducing the number of trucks on Utah’s roads.

However, the organizations suing the UIPA claim there is “too high a cost to our fragile Great Salt Lake, and the communities, plants and animals that depend on it” to justify the construction of these dry ports.

Environmental impact

The environmentalist groups are claiming UIPA’s plans to build inland ports — particularly in Tooele County , Weber County , and Spanish Fork — would accelerate “the collapse of the Great Salt Lake ecosystem” and negatively impact the residents of nearby rural communities.

“The Utah Inland Port Authority, controlled by the legislature, is fast-tracking industrial development in wetlands adjacent to Great Salt Lake … and the consequences of that are going to be catastrophic,” said Deeda Seed, senior Utah campaigner with the Center for Biological Diversity.

Seed said the UIPA is looking to construct an industrial development “in the middle of 12,000 acres of high-functioning biological wetlands” and build a wastewater treatment facility right next to the lake.

“The fact that they are doing it shows that they lack seriousness with regard to protecting the lake,” Seed said. “If they were serious about protecting the lake, they would not be doing this.”

Hart calls the claims that they are not protecting the wetlands “defamation.”

He said the UIPA is doing “more to protect the wetlands than anybody else,” as it prepares to make a $2.5 million contribution to that very cause.

Ben Hart also said they have one of the best environmental engineers in the state who provides findings for every project area and includes the reports in the project area plan, which is available to the public .

“To claim that the Utah Inland Port Authority has not been interested in the environmental protections of the state of Utah, and particularly the Great Salt Lake, is nothing short of absurd,” Hart said.

Finally, Hart said one of the purposes of the inland port is to improve the environment, and in particular, Utah’s air quality.

“We want to make sure that we’re taking trucks off the road, that we’re taking pollution out of the air, that we’re better using rail, and that we’re also helping communities throughout the state to have a better economic future than what they would otherwise,” he said.

Constitutional claims

The lawsuit claims that the Utah Inland Port Authority has been unlawfully operating since 2022 when the legislature passed a law that “shrank the board of the Utah Inland Port Authority to only include five people, three of whom are appointed by the legislature,” according to Seed.

The organizations claim this violates the constitution’s provision of separation of powers because the UIPA “exercises core executive functions,” even though it was formed — including the selection of UIPA members — by the legislature.

The lawsuit says this “disempowers the state’s electorate from exercising their political power to influence how the law is executed.”

Hart countered the claim by saying there are decades of precedent of the speaker of the House and Senate president making appointments.

“I don’t know that there’s a whole lot of merit to making an argument that all of a sudden, just for the Inland Port Authority, the Speaker and President no longer should be making appointments,” he said.

For more information, visit the UIPA’s website or view the lawsuit in full here .

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