Salt Lake City is grateful to UDOT for our working relationship, including the opportunity to serve as a Cooperating Agency for its Little Cottonwood Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) process. Because of Salt Lake City’s responsibilities to protect the water resources and canyon watersheds that serve more than 360,000 people with clean and reliable drinking water, Salt Lake City provided significant input to the EIS over the last few years of study. I am pleased that the EIS decision has identified taking a phased approach to resolving congestion issues in Little Cottonwood Canyon as the first step. Salt Lake City advocated for a phased approach as an alternative to the large and costly construction projects that were proposed.

I remain very concerned about the watershed and environmental impacts of a gondola system in Little Cottonwood Canyon. The City’s chief concern is that the gondola will create significant risk to the canyon watershed through its construction and operations, as well as by inducing substantial additional visitation and development pressures to the watershed. My team has not yet reviewed the full EIS decision, and we are planning to provide additional comments after an in-depth review of the documents.