Potential development dilemma faces Carbon County

By Sun Advocate

It something we all have to face and it may be coming down the pike soon; literally.
Last week I wrote a column about how turning Highway 6 into a four lane highway from Spanish Fork to Green River will change the accidents on the road, making more crashes one car types, some just as deadly as what we have seen in the past. Nonetheless it will be a safer highway than it ever has been before.
But there is more than just a safer highway there is also potential for large amounts of development. Once that road is built it will probably mean more businesses moving into the area (a very good thing) and more people coming here to live because it will be easier to commute to Utah County (a perplexing thing) once the road is finished.
There is an old adage about how people will move somewhere they want to live and then do everything they can to keep others from moving to the same place because they don’t want it to change. I already see that tendency with some people within the county concerning new houses being constructed in their neighborhoods.
Admittedly, Utah will probably never be like southern California where a large portion of the working population in Los Angeles live in the high desert areas like Palmdale and Victorville, but I am sure those type of residents will be a fairly large factor in our local economy someday.
If you don’t think it couldn’t happen here just ask the people of Tooele. Their town began to really open up to commuters about 30 years ago when Stansbury Park was in it’s early stages and since then commuting population has grown until it has become the majority of the citizens in the county. True, Tooele is a lot closer to Salt Lake than Provo is to Price, but if the road is good enough and can be driven fast enough and the snow in the winter continues to be low enough, we could very well become a bedroom community for Utah county industries.
It’s a possibility we all should consider and think about. How would that impact our tax base, our schools, our roads, our utilities and our lives?