By Justin Idiart
justin@newsroom.byu.edu
Spanish Fork City Council members approved a resolution May 9 to deny all future subdivision development applications throughout the city due to the projected maximization of utility capacity.
'A lot of people will be surprised when they read the newspaper tomorrow morning,' said city planner Emil Pierson, surprised that there was no public comment at the city council meeting.
According to the city's Planning Commission's projections, the already-approved 1,600 lots would push Spanish Fork's population to 25,000 within the next four to five years, surpassing the city's ability to provide sewage and culinary water for the new homes.
'It isn't that this has happened overnight,' said City Council member Sherman Huff. 'This has been prudently studied for two to three years by the engineer's office.'
Despite the foreknowledge, council members had taken no action to resolve the problem until Tuesday's resolution to halt all further applications, a month after Pierson and city engineer Richard Heap first presented their findings to the council.
Unaffected by the resolution will be the permits already granted by the city for 580 lots to be developed in now-vacant subdivisions, and an additional 1,026 plots that are still in the application process, according to Pierson.
With a current population of 19,884, plus an average of 3.46 persons per household projected to move into the approved lots over the next five years as they are developed, Spanish Fork's population would reach 25,440 within the next five years, according to Planning Commission's estimates.
That would surpass the 22,506 person capacity of the sewage treatment plant shared with Mapleton and the 24,249 limit of culinary water supply.
City officials decided to place the moratorium on new residential development until the Planning Commission can research and develop a plan this summer outlining the best options to expand the city's utility capacity, whether it be pressurized irrigation of older pipes, expansion of the sewage treatment plant or creation of a regional waste water facility.
Heap said that no matter what's done, 'financing will be difficult.'
The suspension of development won't cause the city any significant financial loss, said Pierson, and residents won't be adversely affected.