Brice Wallace
Officials in Carbon and Emery counties are hoping a new Castle Country Inland Port Project Area will spur companies to put operations there and reverse the flow of young people out of the area.
“Green River’s greatest export, and you can find it riddled in our city minutes, is its children,” Green River Mayor Ren Hatt said before the Utah Inland Port Authority board approved the project area’s creation at a recent meeting. “The median age continues to go up, per census, without there being any real change in population, and so we’re losing more and more of our young people, and the primary reason for that is there is no job.”
The board approved the area, which includes several pieces of land occupying a total of over 2,185 acres along primary roads and rail arteries, including Interstate 70 and US-6. Elected officials in Carbon and Emery counties and Green River City had adopted resolutions calling for the project area’s creation. Industries that will be a focus there are hydrogen and other alternative energy sources, manufacturing, carbon fiber, warehousing and distribution, rail infrastructure utilization and CO2 sequestration.
Green River has “a broad spectrum” of companies it is trying to attract, including those in both renewable and nonrenewable energy, logistical management, agriculture, technology, medicine and mineral processing, Hatt said.
“We’re making a lot of efforts on our own to attract partners to come into Green River; however, with the backing of the Inland Port Authority, we would have much stronger bargaining position to make sure that we could take care of our people, our workers,” he said.
Carbon County Commissioner Larry Jensen said a diversified economy could help shift the local tax base. Coal production shouldered most of the tax burden for over 130 years but now the county has no coal being produced. As a result, since 2012, the 63 percent of the tax base once supplied by coal has moved to local homeowners, he said.
“So, we’re really in a spot, I think, unlike most counties or places in the state, where we really need some additional growth,” Jensen said. “We have companies that are interested in coming here and locating. They would utilize a lot of the local things that we have here that would benefit their industries, but some of the infrastructure is far enough away that the cost of getting it there is prohibiting them from coming. So, your involvement as a board and having some money to infuse here in our community, we anticipate will change that.”
In a prepared statement, Ben Hart, UIPA’s executive director, said that establishment of the Castle Country area positions its economic base to transform from traditional industries to more diversified and sustainable sectors. “This initiative will attract investments into the region, creating a ripple effect of benefits for local communities,” he said.
In a new wrinkle, the board committed to the preservation of the historical and cultural sites within the project area, saying it will not support “development or construction that would destroy cultural and archaeological resources.”
As part of the cultural resources strategy, landowners are required to work with the Utah State Historic Preservation Office to determine buffer zones around any cultural and archaeological artifacts and sites that have been identified within the project area.
“We are deeply committed to protecting the historical and cultural heritage that makes Castle Country unique,” Hatt said in a UIPA news release about the strategy. “Our development efforts will include measures to conserve these invaluable sites, ensuring that growth and preservation go hand in hand.”
Chris Merritt of the preservation office lauded the process spelled out in the strategy.
“I am quite happily surprised at their requirements,” Merritt said. “They have the most restrictive development procedures I have seen in the state, particularly in requiring buffers and avoidance protocols, even though in this case they are not mandated by state or federal cultural resources laws.”
The Castle Country Project Area becomes the state’s 10th. Others are an area in Salt Lake County, including in the Northwest Quadrant of Salt Lake City and parts of West Valley City and Magna; the Iron Springs Inland Port near Cedar City; the Verk Industrial Park project area in Spanish Fork; the Golden Spike project area in Garland, Tremonton, Brigham City and other parts of Box Elder County; the Central Utah Agri-Park in three parts of Juab County; the Mineral Mountains project area, consisting of four zones in Beaver County in parts of Beaver City, Beaver County and Milford City; the Tooele Valley area; the Twenty Wells area in Grantsville in Tooele County; and an area in western Weber County.
Hart told the UIPA board that the next area to be considered is in Fillmore, with approval coming perhaps in August. After that, the board likely will approve only one more area by year-end.
“It’s no secret, if you look around the state, there’ve been a lot of communities that have adopted resolutions” urging approval of project areas, Hart said. “We’re not going to be able to get to all of those. … Next year, I’m going to just say, we’re probably going to be doing two to three. That would be my guess. We don’t have any plans right now, but we’ll probably be looking at an additional two to three. …”
However, Hart said that revisions to existing project areas likely will become more common. “Amendments,” he said, “are going to become a regular part of the process. … Our hope is that we only do one amendment per project per year.”