As Park City Municipal continues its 60-day outreach period for the proposed contaminated soils site along SR 248, the city will be hosting a community panel discussion on the project tonight.
The event is scheduled to begin at 6pm and will be held at Park City’s Jim Santy Auditorium and streamed live on the Park City Government’s Facebook page.
The discussion will be followed by a Q&A session with the panelists. Panelists include Park City Soils Management Facility Project Manager Jonathan Weidenhamer, Environmental Engineer Brett Mickelson, Public Utilities Director Clint McAffee, Councilor Steve Joyce, former City and County Councilor Sally Elliott, and local developer Rory Murphy.
The proposed site, also known as the Gordo Site, has caused a stir in recent months with many members of the public raising concerns over the transparency of the project and voicing unease with a landfill for toxic soil inside the city’s boundaries.
Much of downtown Park City’s soil is contaminated with lead, arsenic and other chemicals -- the byproduct of the city’s days as a mining town in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Almost all construction in the area needs to have toxic soil removed and the city has previously used Richardson Flat and the Gordo Site as a dumping ground and currently trucks the soil to a site over 100 miles away in the western desert of Tooele County.
The city claims a place to store the soil in Park City could save nearly $18 million in transportation costs over the course of current and future city projects.
The city is currently waiting for approval of an application for the site with the Utah Department of Environmental Quality. The UDEQ has told KPCW they will not be releasing any public comment on the application until after Park City’s 60-day outreach period ends in mid-July.
Questions can be sent in advance to Linda.Jager@parkcity.org. Details on how to participate in-person and virtually can be found here.
