With every picture of an epic ski day shared in Utah’s Little Cottonwood Canyon, there are also social media pictures of what’s long been known as “the red snake” — the trail of red tail lights of vehicles and buses clogging the canyon and nearby roads feeding into it. And with the popularity of Alta Ski Area and Snowbird Ski Resort, it’s not just on powder days when the snake slithers.
The solution the Utah Department of Transportation chose to tame it in 2023 is a gondola. It would be the longest in the world and comes with an estimated $729 million price tag at Utah’s taxpayers’ expense.
A group called Gondola Works backs the project. The two ski resorts are part of it, along with several public relations firms and CW Management, founded by former Sandy City councilman Chris McCandless and former Utah State Sen. Wayne Niederhauser.
But there’s a chorus of opposition, and it just got another voice. The Granite Oaks Homeowners Association filed a lawsuit against UDOT. Their suit joins three separate challenges filed earlier by Friends of Alta/Canyon Guard, Save Our Canyons, and Salt Lake City, Sandy City and the Metropolitan Water District — which were combined into one in April.
That combined suit “should be hitting the court sometime later this spring or early summer,” said Deseret Magazine fellow Kevin Lind.
The saga in Little Cottonwood has been a long-running challenge. Not only did UDOT take five years to conduct the analysis that eventually landed on the gondola, but the court battles have drawn things out further. Lind’s deep dive into the legal morass, “Up, up and away: How Utah’s gondola controversy may set the stage for future conservation battles,” tries to untangle the feud and its implications for development in a state where leaders just want to build. He spoke with KUER’s Pamela McCall.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Pamela McCall: What do the three lawsuits that have been combined have in common?
Kevin Lind: At their core, these lawsuits claim or allege that UDOT did not do a thorough enough review of the environmental impacts the gondola might have. They allege that the entire process was limited or in some way kind of failed to consider all necessary elements. Most notably, Salt Lake and Sandy City and the Metropolitan Water District, which are part of the combined lawsuit, sued because they felt that the impact on the watershed was not included in the review.
PM: While the debate plays out, UDOT was supposed to manage canyon traffic using tolls and increased bus service. What happened to that plan?
KL: With the pending nature of the lawsuits, UDOT didn't want to move forward with any part of the plan because it's sitting in litigation. Some of the opponents think that that's not a sign of good faith because the entire intention is to try to mitigate traffic.
PM: What happens if UDOT loses in court?
KL: They could either start over, they could begin the environmental impact review again, [or] they could do nothing. Then it would be up to the Legislature essentially to make decisions about how they're going to mitigate traffic or address this issue. But most likely they would either begin the review process again or UDOT would leave it up to other decision-makers to make the calls as to how they were going to mitigate the traffic in Little Cottonwood Canyon.
