Summit County Manager Tom Fisher says they’ve been in hard negotiations for about a year, since they started looking at purchasing the Florence Gilmor property, off the Highway 40 frontage road.
He says that now, the county has secured about as good a deal as they will get. It’s time for the Council to make a decision.
The parcel is about 460 acres, east of the frontage road. County Manager Fisher said that it’s wedged, basically, between the Justice Center and the UDOT road shed, and extends to the rail/trail. A considerable portion is also part of the Silver Creek watershed, contaminated by historic mine tailings.
Fisher said he can’t talk too much about land-acquisition discussions behind closed doors, but they’re getting close to crunch time.
“Since the Council signed the purchase agreement early last year, we have been meeting regularly with the EPA, with other federal and state resource partners, that are interested in the restoration, eventually, of the lower Silver Creek Reach,” Fisher explained. “We’re getting pretty close. And I know I keep saying that. And ‘pretty close” seems to be a geological measure in regards to negotiating with the EPA. But we’re getting down to the point where both the Administrative Control for Snyderville Basin Rec and the Council are going to be making some final decisions.”
He said negotiations were probably delayed a couple of months, due to the government shutdown earlier this year.
Fisher said the county plans designate about 360 acres of the property as recreation/open space, under a conservation easement. The rest would be possible development.
“And that could range from—we’ve got some adjacent private property owners that are looking to develop,” Fisher continued. “There might be some opportunities there. But mostly there might be some civic or community uses around government operations.”
Fisher said the open area has recreation potential.
“You’d think it’s flat,” Fisher said. “But it has very similar terrain qualities to Round Valley. When you really get out onto it, or hike it, or around in it, it does have some variation to it. It has a stream running through it in the bottom part of the watershed. And so, it has qualities that other areas won’t have. And it will connect to Round Valley because we have connections already under the highway, in order to make that happen. So, it’s just going to open up a different set of terrain with different features.”
We asked, though, why should the county pay $10 million for a parcel that is, in part, an EPA-designated contamination site. Fisher said it may look crazy. But eventually the property will be cleaned up.
“We’re actually trying to facilitate that process a little quicker than it would normally happen,” Fisher explained. “Then it is the desire of the Council to not allow it to be developed in the future and control that development. So, if we step in with this concept, we can achieve a lot of different goals for the community as well as making sure in the future that it’s cleaned up and restored to some—restored in a way that has recreation value.”
The question remains, who will pay for the cleanup—this, a week after the EPA has sued United Park City Mines for the cleanup costs in other sectors of the Silver Creek watershed.
However, Fisher said he doesn’t envision the tab falling to the county.
“But at the end of the day, the EPA remains responsible for cleaning those up,” Fisher continued. “We would not be even entertaining a purchase of this type of property if we weren’t absolved of that responsibility. So that’s the concept behind that.”
