Emery County P&Z opens eight‑day comment period on general plan as commissioners debate solar limits and tax impacts

The Emery County Planning and Zoning Commission on Oct. 8 opened an eight‑day first‑phase comment period on a substantially revised county general plan, asking commissioners to prioritize new material highlighted in yellow and send suggested edits to staff for compilation.

Why it matters: The general plan will guide county policy on land use and large energy projects and is the reference point federal and state agencies use in resource and travel management decisions, the commission noted. Decisions in the plan can shape where solar and other energy developments are encouraged or limited.

Staff said hard copies are available and that electronic drafts were distributed; first‑phase comments are due Oct. 16, with additional opportunities and a public hearing scheduled later in the revision process. The staff presentation explained the draft’s markup: yellow indicates new text, green indicates moved material (underlined where it now appears) and red strikethroughs indicate deleted language.

Commissioners flagged multiple outdated references to 'WSA' — shorthand for wilderness study areas — and asked that those references be removed or corrected because Emery County has wilderness but not WSA designations. Staff asked commissioners to focus on the yellow sections first and email proposed rewording, grammatical edits or items that should return for public hearing.

Renewables and limits: A central thread of the discussion was how the plan should treat large‑scale solar and wind projects. Commissioners raised options including numerical limits on acreage, setbacks from property lines or municipal boundaries and language to guide mitigation for landowners and neighboring uses. One commissioner said the county should consider “how close solar panels can be to city limits and also what setbacks maybe we should have” and suggested an example setback of 200 feet from property lines as a starting point for discussion.

Several commissioners voiced the need to balance landowner rights with county goals. Chair Gary Arrington said the county should not “stomp it out” of development and emphasized Emery County’s energy resources as a potential long‑term economic driver: "we're the energy capital, and we wanna fulfill our obligation…so nobody's affected by it," Arrington said.

Federal lands and leases: Commissioners also raised concern that lease agreements on federal lands or private parcels are being signed now, sometimes without local notification. A commissioner noted the Bureau of Land Management and other agencies have identified potential solar parcels on maps and urged insertion of guiding verbiage in the general plan to help the county respond as leases and proposals emerge.

Tax and fiscal impacts: Commissioners sought clarity on how large projects affect local taxation. An extended explanation by a member of the discussion outlined that utility‑scale projects are generally centrally assessed by the state and that centrally assessed property constitutes a substantial portion of Emery County’s tax base. The speaker cited a hypothetical $500,000,000 project value as an example and said centrally assessed industries account for roughly 60% of the county’s tax base, which shapes how revenue is distributed to the county and other taxing entities. Commissioners asked staff and the state tax commission for more precise figures on how specific projects would translate into changes to household property tax bills.

Project scale and timing: Commissioners discussed an example project (identified in the meeting as Rock Canyon) described as roughly 1,800 acres, and asked whether battery storage components were included and how long lease terms (20 years or more) would affect land use permanence. Several speakers said phase‑one edits should address broad policy direction; more detailed ordinance work would follow once the general plan establishes county priorities.

What’s next: Staff will compile commissioners’ edits and forward them to the consultant (BioWest). The commission emphasized the Oct. 16 deadline for initial comments and noted a later public hearing and additional comment phases, with a target to complete the revision process by January.

Sources and context: The reporting here uses direct remarks recorded during the Oct. 8, 2025 Emery County Planning and Zoning Commission meeting. Quotations are taken from statements by Chair Gary Arrington and other commissioners as recorded in the meeting transcript.

The commission did not take final policy action on solar limits at the Oct. 8 meeting; next steps are the submission of compiled staff edits to the consultant, public outreach and future public hearings.