Conservationists and environmentalists have again sued over southwest Utah’s Northern Corridor Highway. It’s yet another entry in a decades-long saga.
The suit is the latest attempt to stop the road from being built through the Red Cliffs National Conservation Area near St. George. The Trump administration approved the four-lane, 4.5-mile highway in January, reversing a 2024 Biden administration decision.
“We are unfortunately having to defend Red Cliffs National Conservation Area again from this decision-making, which seems to be clearly politically motivated, given that just over a year ago this exact same highway proposal was denied,” said Hannah Goldblatt, an attorney at Advocates for the West and counsel for the conservation groups.
Local leaders say Washington County needs the road to handle future growth. Opponents worry about how the highway would harm the protected natural landscape and the threatened Mojave Desert tortoises that live there.
Six local and national organizations, including Conserve Southwest Utah and the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, filed the lawsuit against the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. It argues the latest highway approval runs afoul of multiple federal laws, including the Endangered Species Act and the act of Congress that established the conservation area in 2009.
Some of these same groups also sued to stop the highway in 2021 after it was greenlit by the first Trump administration, resulting in a settlement. Ultimately, the Biden administration revoked the highway’s approval.
The latest legal action was not surprising, said Washington County Commissioner Gil Almquist. He views it as merely another delay on the path toward eventually building the road.
“We respect their efforts, but in this case, we feel like we have uncovered every stone and that we have looked for every possible disruption and have mitigated it or answered it,” he said. “Therefore, we want to proceed.”
The Biden administration’s 2024 environmental impact study suggested the highway would increase the risk of wildfire and fragment the tortoise’s habitat. In Almquist’s view, however, those concerns have since been addressed, so for a new lawsuit to be successful, it would need to put forward a fresh concern.
“They have their rights to do it,” he said of the environmental groups. “I just think they're barking up a tree that we've already climbed.”
That’s not how the conservationists see it, Goldblatt said. The facts that led to the Biden-era termination of the highway plan have remained the same, she said, so there’s no reason to believe the highway would suddenly have less of an impact now.
“Nothing has changed. If anything, things have just gotten worse,” she said. “And now they've reapproved the highway. So to us, that doesn't make sense.”
The 2026 reapproval also violates the settlement terms from the previous lawsuit, she said. The federal agencies agreed to update the conservation area’s management plan to reflect the additional environmental impacts found in the 2024 study. But she said that hasn’t happened.
Almquist and other local leaders, however, point to the thousands of acres that gained protection as part of the Red Cliffs Desert Reserve in exchange for the highway’s 2021 approval. That piece of land, called Zone 6, is home to popular rock climbing and mountain biking areas southeast of St. George. According to the BLM’s 2024 environmental study, it also has higher-density tortoise populations than the section where the highway would be built.
If the road approval is revoked again, he said, the Utah Trust Lands Administration may proceed with selling its land within Zone 6 for development.
“We've done enough,” Almquist said. “Now let's go hike and bike and play in Zone 6 and up in the original reserve, and let us have this road.”
The Utah Department of Transportation had planned to begin pre-construction survey work at the proposed highway within weeks, according to local officials, but that may now be up in the air.
The lawsuit filed Feb. 4 is not a request for an injunction to halt work at the highway site, Goldblatt said. However, her team is exploring legal options and talking with UDOT’s legal counsel to see if there’s another way to prevent work from starting while the lawsuit is ongoing.
If the Northern Corridor case ends up having its day in court, she feels confident in the merits of their case.
“We maintain that our legal claims against this highway are super strong, and when we have the opportunity to fully brief them in front of a judge, we expect to win,” Goldblatt said. “That's why we are hopeful that we will have a good outcome and stop this highway for good.”
