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Show Land preemption opposed in T,uemlle Plans of the Utah Highway Department to build a highspeed high-speed limited access highway through Toquerville are being challenged by a group of Toquerville To-querville citizens and ISSUE, a southern Utah environmental environmen-tal group. The highway construction is to replace the present road Irom Anderson Junction to La-Verkin La-Verkin Junction, which is too narrow . and which presents too many sharp curves for modern highway travel. The objection is not. to the road itself, but to its placement. place-ment. Present plans call for a road passing through the town of Toquerville, which would destroy the town's irrigation ir-rigation system and pre-empt agricultural land owned by the residents. An alternative, supported by the dissents, would . place the road about one mile west of the town, well away from developed areas. According to Lloyd Gordon, executive director of ISSUE, the group will demand the filing of an Enviromental Impact Im-pact Statement, as required by Federal law. "The Utah Highway Department claims that an Impact Statement is not required, because initial planning began in 1966," said (Jordon. "Federal Courts have decided in a number of cases that the 1W9 National Environmental Envir-onmental Protection Act applies ap-plies in any case where the highway has not gone beyond i initial planning." "The Impact Statement will) not of itself force a route change," said Gordon, "but it will require the Highway Department De-partment to take a thorough, objective look at their proposal propos-al and the alternatives. When they file their report, it will be available to all Interested persons. We believe that once everything is out in the open, the alternate proposal will be accepted." 'This is an importnat case for ISSUE," Gordo said. "We want to establish the right of citizens to participate in the decisions of government . . . We want to see the provisions of the Act applied in southern Utah." I T 1 |