The letter says much information from the Woodland Road application was essentially copied and pasted into the 595 plan without new consideration, wetland studies weren’t performed adequately, high quality wetlands would be replaced by low quality ones situated alongside paved roads, and a focus was on disingenuously making the 595 route look less damaging than routes that really would be more feasible than 595 if the road weren’t for the Kennecott mine.

It seems the applicant did little to address the Army Corps’ original concerns with the Woodland Road, in 2010, and focused mostly on applying political pressure from Lansing and Washington. Changing the application to follow the law and have it make sense would likely cost quite a bit of money; we’ll see if Kennecott decides to have the county do this, will just apply more political pressure to get this OK’d by the EPA, or will drop the issue.

I’d have to somewhat agree with your observation about too many words. I had a tough time with this article – there were so many good public comments. As it is I left many of the best ones out. However, I could have tried harder to shorten the story, as well as add more photos. Sometimes there’s a tendency to cover voices most often left out of standard media, otherwise most people will never hear it.

I think the emphasis/theme is more on the fact that comments against the road were so varied and encompassing.

Thanks for commenting on the story, and plowing through it.