Utah Centennial County History Series - Tooele County 1998

Page 376

GRANTSVILLE AND OTHER TOOELE VALLEY TOWNS

359

flies, and the fly problem festered for several years until in May of 1987 residents of Erda, Stansbury Park, and Lake Point protested about the hoards of flies that swarmed over the area. They took their complaints to the Tooele County Building and Zoning Board.80 The problem lingered for several years while the county public health department worked with Fassio to solve the problem. Cooperating with the county environmental health department, Fassio agreed to treat chicken feed with an insecticide and use a fly predator in the coops to keep fly populations in check. The company also agreed to require manure to be plowed six inches into the soil within several hours of dumping. 81 Fassio added more laying units on West Erda Way in 1992. In 1969 the Tooele County Commission, under the direction of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), commissioned a siteselection study for what would become the Tooele Valley Airport. A 119-acre area was selected on West Erda Way approximately twentytwo miles south and west of the Salt Lake City International Airport. Construction began in the early 1970s, directed by the FAA, the Utah D e p a r t m e n t of Transportation and Tooele County. 82 The airport boasted a single asphalt runway 75 feet wide and 5,500 feet long, a parallel taxi system, a fuel area, hangers, and aircraft parking aprons. In 1991 Salt Lake City Corporation acquired the Tooele Valley Airport from Tooele County "to use as a prime training facility and to provide a fully developed general aviation airport in the western section of the region."83 Most airport traffic consisted of training operations originating at the Salt Lake City International Airport and Salt Lake City Municipal Airport II. Local aircraft and, to a lesser extent, aircraft associated with the Utah Army National Guard and Tooele Army Depot also used the Tooele airport. Between 1986 and 1993, airport operations increased about 127 percent. In 1993 a master plan was prepared to project potential growth and suggest plans for expansion over a twenty-year period. Potential plans include the purchase of 144 acres of land adjacent to the airport to extend the runway, add additional aircraft and automobile parking, and add executive hangers. 84 These recent developments indicate that Erda (and Tooele Valley in general) are in the midst of changes, developing both large-scale


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