Parley’s Coalition Update on the Mine Proposal
Our friends from the Protect Parley’s Coalition put together an update which excellently outlines the history, and current situation and concerns.
Granite Construction Company appears to have nearly completed grading a frontage road off Exit 132 to provide access to the proposed 635-acre, I-80 South Quarry, two miles up Parleys Canyon.
This despite the fact that almost four years after announcing the project, the property owner, Tree Farm LLC, whose principal is Jesse Lassley, still does not have a conditional use permit from Salt Lake County to proceed with the development of the quarry.
The road is being constructed on Utah Department of Transportation (UDOT) right-of-way and UDOT is required to allow property owners along the freeway to develop access to their property.
The road plan also required a stream alteration permit to enclose a section of Smith’s Creek coming out of Mt Aire Canyon and Granite was issued permits to do this by the Utah Division of Water Rights, which also is unable to deny such permits if the applicant meets all of the water-related criteria- even if the road over the culvert is unlikely to ever be used!
The photos below reveal all you need to know about what Granite Construction will do to Parleys Canyon if this project is allowed to go forward.
The mouth of Mt Aire Canyon stream BEFORE Granite graded the road.
The mouth of Mt Aire Canyon stream AFTER Granite graded the road.
The Air Quality Permit
On August 8, 2025, Granite Construction submitted a “New Source Review Notice of Intention” (NSR NOI) to the Utah Division of Air Quality for a permit to generate air pollution at the proposed I-80 South Quarry in Parleys Canyon.
This, nearly three years after they had submitted their original air pollution permit request, which had gone through extensive review, public comment, revision, further review, and, we were told, was on the cusp of being approved by DAQ. It left everyone who has been monitoring this project, scratching their heads. From what we can decipher, Granite Construction has decided to lower the estimate of “material throughput” (i.e. the amount of rock excavated, crushed and transported from the pit each day) and started the entire air pollution permitting process over again.
Which, in turn, raises important questions.
Does Granite now concede that the material from this gravel pit is not desperately needed to meet local demand as was validated by two separate studies commissioned by Salt Lake County and the Utah Department of Natural Resources? Granite has been asserting from the beginning that the destruction of lower Parleys Canyon is justified to meet a market demand for sand, gravel and aggregate that they appear to have made up.
Has Granite realized that their air pollution assumptions just don’t add up? That they lack access to a supply of water to suppress dust that would have been generated by their initial “throughput” targets, as required by the Division of Air Quality?
The Court Case
In 2022, Tree Farm filed a legal challenge against Salt Lake County, claiming that, because they have “vested mining rights” that supersede the County’s prohibition on new gravel pits in the Wasatch Canyons. the County must issue them a conditional use permit to proceed to develop the proposed I-80 South Quarry in partnership with Granite Construction.
The case is assigned to the Third District Court and the parties are still in the “discovery” phase- exchanging documents related to how each side intends to argue their case. The case is unlikely to be heard before the judge for several months. And no matter how the court rules, the decision is likely to be appealed to the Utah Supreme Court by whichever party does not prevail. Therefore, a decision in the case is unlikely to be finalized for at least a couple of years.
Over the past three legislative sessions, efforts have been made to amend Utah’s mining laws, seemingly aimed at increasing the likelihood that the courts will rule in favor of allowing the Tree Farm/Granite project to move forward. In the most recent legislative session, the sand and gravel industry, local governments, and the legislature hammered out compromise language about the property rights of gravel pit owners that did not create such a loophole for the I-80 South Quarry in Parleys Canyon.