Annex anxiety — Copperton residents like the status quo

COPPERTON — Tucked away from the Salt Lake Valley's sprawling southwestern suburbia, the small mining township at the mouth of Bingham Canyon has gone virtually unchanged and unnoticed for generations.

Copperton, population 750, is a community so quiet that long-time residents joke that they can hear their grass growing. That's the way they like things, and that's the way they want them to stay.

But residents — both original homeowners and new move-ins alike — worry that neighboring cities, enticed by promising new developments on the west bench, will roll over their township in a quest to grab Kennecott Land's planned communities.

The mining corporation's development arm has announced intentions to improve 93,000 acres along the foothills of the Oquirrh Mountains — a 26-mile-long swath stretching from Daybreak in South Jordan to another major hub designated just west of Magna.

Traditionally, cities have grown and attracted businesses by "cherry-picking" such developments from the unincorporated county, said Jacqueline Murphy, community relations specialist for Salt Lake County. "They've just about cherry-picked the unincorporated towns to death, taking away their tax bases."

It has been fairly easy for cities that border new developments to make a strong case for annexation, like they did with Daybreak, she said. And where unincorporated townships like Copperton, Magna and Kearns stand in the way, cities push to annex them as well so they can get their hands on Kennecott land.

"Most of the people who live in townships want to live in townships, and they are afraid that because they are the smallest of the municipal units, their wants and needs are going to be forfeited," Murphy said.

Township residents shouldn't have to worry about being annexed, at least not according to a law legislators enacted last year that allows residents to decide whether they want to be under city or county jurisdiction. The law protects township borders until 2010 when legislators will evaluate survey results from township residents to determine whether their communities should remain unincorporated permanently.

But residents may have good reasons to fear if city officials, who are kicking up a fuss about the new law, try to cancel it out with a new law during the upcoming legislative session, Murphy said.

Copperton residents say they know they're going to be engulfed by developments on three sides, with the mine to their west. It's inevitable.