JORDANELLE, Wasatch County —Sometime in the not-too-distant future, Jordanelle Reservoir development promises to open up a new can of people.

Just add water — the lure of living around the lake — and poof: instant population.

Comparatively speaking.

It took some 150 years to accumulate approximately 15,000 people in the Heber Valley. Within the next 15 to 30 years, there could be 15,000 to 20,000 up the hill, east of the valley on U.S. 40, at the vast system of developments master-planned by Wasatch County to ring the reservoir.

What will that do to the politics of the area?

How will the quick-grow community up the hill affect the lives of homestead-style families whose bloodlines have stretched back for decades in the valley?

"Sheer numbers say the power will go where the people are. If there are 20,000 up on the hill, they'll control the 18,000, say, down in the valley," said Robert Wren, former chairman of the Wasatch County Republican Party. "That's politics. Always has been."

In fact, at least some Wasatch County residents have been so sensitive to potential Jordanelle growth that some feel it already has affected local politics.

Last November, voters broke with more than 100 years of tradition, becoming one of five Utah counties to approve a seven- or nine-member county council. The slate of council candidates for Wasatch's new form of government, which includes an appointed county manager, is due to go before voters in November 2002.

A focal point of the decision last November to go with a seven-member body was voters believing the three-member commission "sold out" to Jordanelle developers. Some residents felt the three too easily greased the skids for massive future construction projects around the lake that eventually could negatively impact Heber Valley.

"You figure that's really one of the main reasons they voted out the three-member commission," said LaRen Provost, chairman of the current Wasatch County Commission.

In reality that wasn't really the case, Provost, an auto parts store owner whose roots run decades-deep in the county, said. "It wasn't true, but a lot of people believed it. That swung the election."

But Wren thinks Jordanelle only partly explains last November's vote.

"I think what a lot of people were concerned about was simply the matter of geographical representation in general," said Wren, who led the petition drive of Voters for a Representative Government, the group that got the seven-member council issue placed on the ballot.