Mapleton considers adjusting city boundaries for development

MAPLETON — How much risk is too much risk?

That was the thorny question that was discussed for several hours Wednesday as the Mapleton City Council listened to arguments why it should work with Spanish Fork to modify city boundaries and bring the infamous Ensign-Bickford land into the city.

For more than six decades, various companies — including Trojan Corp. and Ensign-Bickford — manufactured explosives there until officials discovered contaminated water wells in Mapleton, a few miles north of the site.

Several south Mapleton residents, including former Mayor Marilyn Peterson, developed cancer and some died after suing Ensign-Bickford.

A plume of contaminated water moving north from the site was discovered, leading to a 1997 settlement with Mapleton that included flushing the aquifer through another city well. That water is now used in a pressurized irrigation system, which Ensign-Bickford built.

Dissatisfied with the settlement, Mapleton sued Ensign-Bickford again in 2006 for $100 million, but that suit was dismissed.

Manufacturing ended in February 2006 and the site has been cleaned up, state officials say.

Now, developer Jack Evans wants to partner with Ensign-Bickford to build a 600-acre housing community on the site, along with a strip of commercial buildings along U.S. 6. Developers had taken the project to Spanish Fork, but Evans turned to Mapleton to modify the boundary between the two cities because it would be less expensive to run a sewer line to the site from Mapleton than Spanish Fork, Mapleton Mayor Laurel Brady said. Both cities dump into Spanish Fork's sewer treatment plant.

Mapleton officials called a public meeting June 30 and again on Wednesday to discuss whether the city should modify the boundary.

"During the June 30 meeting, I realized we had no information specific to the contamination," Brady said.

Brad Maulding of the Utah Department of Environmental Quality noted that after manufacturing ceased, the state investigated and found 44 sites that needed cleanup.

Two methods were used — either hauling the highly contaminated dirt to a landfill near Price, where it was processed, or taking treated, low-level contaminated soil to a 6-acre northern location on Ensign-Bickford land, where it has been piled up and will be capped with 2 feet of clean dirt and revegetated, Maulding said. The area is along a fault line.

No development will ever be allowed in that location, he said.