Business View Magazine | September 2019

300 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE SEPTEMBER 2019 northern Idaho all the way to Los Angeles, via Las Vegas, and U.S. Highway 6 is the best route to get from the Wasatch Front and cities such as Salt Lake, Provo, and Ogden, which contain most of Utah’s population, and cities on the eastern side of the Rockies, such as Denver and Colorado Springs. “The junction of those two roads is in Spanish Fork and our new shopping district also has blossomed right around that junction. That’s where the Canyon Creek development is located; that’s where Intermountain Healthcare is building a hospital; and that’s where we anticipate robust growth for a number of years to come.” Powering Spanish Fork’s homes, businesses, and retail centers is the responsibility of the city’s municipally-owned power department, part of the Utah Municipal Power Agency (UMPA). “That agency is working to do a number of different things to develop renewable energy production for their portfolio,” Anderson says. “One of those involves the prospect of building a solar farm on an 80-acre site that Spanish Fork City owns. The site is a capped landfill and we think that’s a great location and a great use of that property that, otherwise, we might struggle to find a productive use for. That is probably a couple of years off before that becomes a reality, but all indications are that’s going to happen. We’re very encouraged at the prospect of UMPA being able to add that to their portfolio. Currently, the power production in Spanish Fork is a little bit geothermal, a little bit hydro, a little bit coal, and the windmills that we have here in the city provide power to a number of different agencies, and we love having them in the community. They really have put Spanish Fork on the map in terms of providing a landmark that draws visitors to tour the site or otherwise view the windmills.” (In September 2008, the Spanish Fork Wind Project was completed. It included nine wind turbines that are capable of producing up to 18.9 megawatts at full production, enough electricity to power up to 6,000 typical homes.) The solar farm, though, is the most likely thing that will happen here, short term, to create a new source of renewable energy that our community will tap directly into.” Municipal power is one advantage that Spanish