To that end, the company entered into a consent decree in U.S. District Court this past spring that legally holds them to a promise, which includes financial assurances, that Kennecott will continue spending millions more cleaning up the groundwater. Payne said the decree was the final step in getting the EPA to remove the South Zone from the list of proposed sites. The EPA, he noted, along with the state will retain oversight on continued cleanup efforts.

After being sued by the state in 1986 and settling in 1995, Kennecott has also funded construction and operation of a reverse osmosis plant near Copperton with plans for another plant to be running by 2010 that will combined provide drinking water to about 7,000 homes.

While being proposed as a Superfund site may not have impacted residential property values, Payne said more "sophisticated" buyers or developers in the commercial market may now take "less pause" in building in communities within the South Zone now that it will no longer be associated with the words Superfund site.

"It certainly hasn't stopped development," Payne said. "Maybe it scares some people away — I haven't heard anything."

Rio Tinto's long-term plan for a "West Bench" vision is to develop over half of about 95,000 acres it owns on the west side of the Salt Lake Valley into "sustainable" developments, or walkable communities like Rio Tinto's current Daybreak development. About 40,000 acres will be left as open space.

As for its mining operations, Kennecott plans on operating its gigantic open pit mine until about 2036. By 2012 Kennecott expects a study to be complete on whether underground mining for copper will be the world's second largest mining company's next operation in the Oquirrh Mountains.

---

E-mail: sspeckman@desnews.com