Is the Environmental Aspect of Mountain Accord Mainly Marketing?

Any time there is contention over the Mountain Accord, supporters of the idea will always say that the detractors shouldn’t focus on the transportation aspects… what the Accord is really about is the environment.

I’ve been reading through the 13 pages of meeting minutes from an October joint meeting of the Summit County and Park City Councils regarding Mountain Accord. Do you know how many times the environment, or watershed, or sustainability, or wildlife, or pretty much anything not to do with transportation came up in the meeting? One time. The minutes read: “Liza thinks there are possible economic and environmental benefits to getting people out of their cars.” That’s it. How many times did the word transportation show up? 25.

If the environment was the focal point of this process, I would have expected at least one comment like, “a tunnel doesn’t sound great but if it allows us to continue to have clean water it is worth it!” Was there anything like that? No. The pro Accord talk was all basically we need to study the economic benefits/consequences more, see what positive impacts it could have on transportation in the Basin, and do whatever it takes to keep Guardsman Pass closed.

I know they would like us to think it’s about the environment, but when they don’t even talk about it, it makes one wonder if the environmental angle is all just marketing.