1 / 3

Dave Anderson, community and economic development director for Spanish Fork City, opens the press question-and-answer session after the Spanish Fork inland port was approved at a meeting Monday, July 17, 2023, held a few minutes earlier.

Nichole Whiteley, Daily Herald

2 / 3

This image shows the proposed Spanish Fork inland port project area, in yellow, located west of Interstate 15. The inland port was approved Monday, July 17, 2023, by the Utah Inland Port Authority.

Courtesy Utah Inland Port Authority

3 / 3

Sen. Jerry Stevenson, Utah Senate District 21, speaks to the public attending and to the Utah Inland Port Authority as they discuss items on the agenda at their meeting Monday, July 17, 2023.

Nichole Whiteley, Daily Herald

❮ ❯

The Utah Inland Port Authority on Monday approved the Spanish Fork project area for the Verk Industrial Park, an inland port that will cover 2,200 acres of land including and surrounding the Spanish Fork Airport. This approval comes one week after the Spanish Fork City Council approved the project during a meeting on July 11.

The Verk Industrial Park has three goals that were outlined in the presentation by Dave Anderson, community and economic development director for Spanish Fork:

1. “To provide a variety of employment opportunities for the residents of Spanish Fork and the surrounding area.”

2. “Attempt to maintain an adequate supply of industrial land.”

3. “Having sites for industrial development to happen where sanitary sewer stormwater management, wastewater, police and fire protection — basically where utilities are available.”

“That’s really where we fall short today,” Anderson said. “We don’t have an adequate supply of industrial land in a community that is at the junction of major transportation corridors, a community where multiple rail lines exist today that serve multiple businesses in the community.”

The Verk Industrial Park will provide education opportunities, higher-paying jobs and overall progression of Spanish Fork economically, according to Spanish Fork City Mayor Mike Mendenhall. “The opportunity to plan regionally and still act locally is why this is a big deal for us economically,” he said.

Mendenhall said the teamwork between participating entities — Nebo School District, Inland Port Authority, Spanish Fork City and others — is pushing them forward and making this project a success.

While the benefits of the Verk Industrial Park were reiterated throughout the meeting and press conference on Monday, the project has also elicited concerns brought by citizens and community pushback.

Some of the main concerns citizens spoke to the Daily Herald about, and commented publicly on during the meeting, were environmental impacts, resident health impacts, transparency and communication with residents, desecration of native burials and artifacts, and loss of wetlands and farmland. These same concerns were brought to the Spanish Fork City Council before the project was unanimously approved.

However, previous landowners of property within the project area expressed enthusiastic support for the inland port. “We want to be very public about the fact that we endorse and support and encourage the board to approve this project,” David Hennefer, one of the largest landowners in the project boundaries, said during the public comment section of the meeting. Hennefer explained that his support comes from the jobs it will provide and the access to goods through the railway.

The port is unlike usual ports, the Inland Port Authority explained during the meeting. It will not consist of only warehouses. Rather, it will consist of companies that provide jobs, such as tech companies, small businesses, biotech companies, advanced manufacturing companies, large corporations and more. Rep. Mike Schultz, a Hooper Republican representing Utah House District 12 and a Utah Inland Port Authority board member, said during the press conference about Spanish Fork, “It’s going to develop anyways. The question is, how does it happen?”

Ben Hart, executive director for the Utah Inland Port Authority, explained further to the Daily Herald that one of the goals of directing this economic growth is for generations to have the opportunity to stay in Spanish Fork because they have provided enough jobs for them to do so. “It creates economic growth, the right kind of economic growth, for the community,” he said.

The Inland Port Authority does not create development, Hart said, but rather facilitates development. “We’re only willing to come in when a county or a community has already designated by zoning a certain area for development. So we’re not going to come in and pressure farmers to leave or anything like that,” he said.

In regard to eminent domain, Hart said no farmers will be forced to leave their land for the developers of the inland port.

Effect on Timpanogos Nation

Many of the Timpanogos Tribe’s ancestors were laid to rest across the Wasatch Front and within the Verk Industrial Park project area. The port is within the Spanish Fork Reservation. Some tribal members fear that when this farmland is developed, more bodies of this tribe will be dug up, their graves desecrated and their artifacts lost. This has already happened with many of the roads that have been built. Skeletons from those in the tribe have been found in surrounding areas, and Mary Murdock Meyer, chief executive of the Timpanogos Nation, said her ancestors are buried in this area, including one of their chiefs.

During a question-and-answer session, Meyer said, “When you go out and start digging up the land, I would like to think that you look at that as the fact that they are bodies who were buried with love and care, and they need respect in that way, instead of just dug up, plowed under and cement poured over the top of them. There needs to be some protection for that. I sit here and I listen to how wonderful you think this project is, and all I can think is at the cost of my ancestors’ blood.”

Meyer explained she is not against projects and growth, but said archeological studies and preservation needs to be done first.

She said she would like to see the burial grounds fenced off and be left undisturbed. This meeting was the first Meyer attended because, she said, no contact to the Timpanogos Nation was attempted by Spanish Fork City Council or the Inland Port Authority.

During the Spanish Fork City Council meeting when the port was approved, in addressing the concern about native burials and artifacts, Scott Wolford, director of technology and business policy for the Inland Port Authority, said, “Neither have we reached out nor been reached out to. We work very closely with the state historic preservation office, Dr. Chris Merritt (state historic preservation officer) and Dr. Derrina Kopp (human remains program lead forensic/physical anthropologist).”

When this meeting was brought to the attention of Meyer, she said she made sure to attend, although there was no time for her to speak during the public comment session before a decision was made. She said she came to the meeting to represent and speak for her nation and ancestors in hopes that their burial sites and artifacts are preserved.

Hart said that, to his knowledge, no direct contact has been made with the Timpanogos Tribe, but public meetings and outreach events were held prior to the adoption of the project. He added that within their environmental review of the project area, a review of tribal lands was included, and he said they will continue to work with those who have an interest in the project.

This inland port is a 25-year project and development will happen over time. After concern about the Timpanogos Tribe was brought to attention, Hart explained that the Utah Inland Port Authority is not done with the project after approving it but will continue to address environmental, historical and archeological impacts.

“We bind ourselves to doing that. We’re not just one and done here for the project area approval,” he said. “For the next 25 years, as long as this project area is up and running, we will be working with the local community, working with local stakeholders on any of the dynamics and issues related to this site.”

An overwhelming consensus among those with concerns about the project was the need for more transparency and resident participation in the making of these decisions from the Spanish Fork City Council and the Inland Port Authority.

“Certainly I acknowledge that some of the comments that we heard in the public hearing earlier, they’re real, and we understand that,” Menenhall said. “But I believe the best way to deal with the impacts is to use the tools that this project will provide.”

Effect on air pollution and farming

Mendenhall explained there will be potentially 10 million-plus square feet of buildings in part of the project area, and with that, he said, comes impacts such as traffic issues and other concerns. However, he added, “What working with the Port Authority, I believe, does as much as anything is it gives us a chance to really premeditate what those impacts are going to be and to use the tools that this area affords our community to use to get out ahead, to build roads ahead of the need to install infrastructure ahead of the need, and to do things that oftentimes otherwise we can’t do.”

The concern of air quality was brought by James Westwater, chairman and founder of Utah Valley Earth Forum, who in a press release stated that, “According the Dr. Brian Moench of the Utah Physicians for a Health Environment, harmful air pollution that would be generated by this new inland port would shorten residents’ lives and increase maladies such as asthma, miscarriages, birth defects, COPD, and multiple forms of cancer.”

Hart said, “Growth is going to happen. We understand that. I think inland port is not focused on just trying to stimulate growth. I think that’s one of the common misconceptions. We’re really in the business of trying to stimulate the right kinds of growth.”

He addressed the question of environmental concerns by explaining that, through their studies, they bring public awareness to things like wetlands in the area. The railway that will be utilized in the inland port, he said, will take 300 trucks off of the road, reducing carbon emissions, which is one of the air pollution concerns. While this development can negatively impact the environment, Hart said it can also help the environment by ensuring development of the city is done in a way to minimize these impacts through this project rather than allow the development to happen without as many regulations.

Jackie Larson, owner and manager of Seven Bar Farming and previous owner of farmland within the project area, expressed her concerns about the effect this project will have on farmland. She explained that the decisions of one farmer or a property owner nearby will affect the soil and the ability of another farmer to farm well. This means that, while no farmers will be forced to leave, as farmers do leave the area by selling their land it will have a negative impact on the other farmers in the area, she claimed.

“We still need the sun, for one,” Larson said. “Depending on how close the buildings are and the orientation of that, (it) could impact our farms.”

In response to promises of the inland port reducing carbon emissions, Larson said, “They fail to acknowledge that this ground already becomes a carbon sink when it’s utilized for agriculture.”

Newsletter