After a flood of 6,000 comments from residents worried that the proposed northward expansion of the Legacy Parkway would destroy homes, hurt farming and divide communities, the Utah Department of Transportation on Thursday released tweaks to its plan that it says would lessen impacts.

Refined plans now would take 69 homes, instead of up to 137 under earlier proposals for the $485 million West Davis Corridor. To help farms, proposed alignments were changed to run along the edge of some of them or leave large, farmable fields on both sides of the road.

And to help avoid wetland impacts and other environmental concerns, UDOT eliminated one of its three earlier alternatives that went through the far-west portion of Syracuse. Randy Jefferies, project manager, said that alternative also did not help traffic as much as other alternatives.

But not everyone is happy. Owners of homes and farms still in the path of the road are upset, and environmental groups worry the highway would accelerate development and air pollution — and may hurt wetlands and wildlife.

While Dorothy Law, of Black Island Farms in Syracuse, has not yet seen the latest alignments, she vowed Thursday to continue fighting to preserve her family’s 52-year-old business.

“They’re destroying my farm,” Law said of the agency’s plans to bisect a portion of her family’s 350-acre property. “When you cut a vegetable field in half, there are watering and accessibility issues.”

UDOT says the highway would affect up to 232 acres of prime farmland. Jefferies said tweaks were made to the possible routes to push them “to the edges of farms or to make sure we have large areas for farming on either edge of the alignment.”

For several months, Steven and Christine Peck have rallied hundreds of neighbors

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