The Wasatch County Council on Wednesday approved a settlement agreement with mining company Maverick Rock after a more than year-long legal battle over its proposed expansion.

Maverick Rock has sought to expand mining operations of its East Ekins Mine near Santaquin by adding a 426-acre mine in Daniels Canyon.

The county denied Maverick Rock’s request for a public hearing — all that is required under state law for the expansion to go forward — in June 2025 after allegedly ignoring several such requests from the mining company since that February.

Maverick Rock took Wasatch County to court in July 2025, and Fourth District Judge Jennifer Mabey sided with the mining company in April. She found that Maverick Rock had the right to expand under state code because Great Blue Limestone and Manning Canyon Shale, the materials mined at the East Ekins Mine, are present in Daniels Canyon.

Per Mabey’s ruling, the County Council held a public hearing on April 22, but no residents made public comments. Between that hearing and now, however, there have been more than 100 public comments on the issue, according to Deputy County Attorney Alex Stoedter.

The county further stalled the expansion by arguing that it would pose a threat to public health, safety and welfare. Under state code, this allows the county to negotiate mitigation measures with the mining company, which were approved through the settlement agreement on Wednesday. 

These mitigation measures, Stoedter said, are “greatly limited” and pale in comparison to what the county could have demanded if the mine had gone through the local conditional use permitting process. Typically, mines would have to go through the conditional use permitting process in the area the expansion is proposed in, but Mabey’s ruling and state code overrode that authority. 

Conditional use permitting does not allow the county to deny a mine in the area, but it does allow the county to ask for more stringent mitigation measures than those that were in the approved settlement agreement.

“(Mitigation in the settlement agreement) is limited to things that do not go beyond what a state permit would require. They have to be reasonable, and they have to be narrowly tailored to findings of endangerment,” Stoedter said. “They’ve got all their permits, dust, air, water, all those things, and we reviewed them. They’re in compliance. But they’re agreeing to these mitigation measures, and it’s going to allow them to start mining.”

The county argued that the expansion could have adverse noise, air quality and traffic impacts, but its foremost concern was protecting water quality, particularly for the town of Daniel, which has two wells next to the excavation site that serve 190 people, according to Daniel Planning Director Eric Bunker.

“That’s a big water source for the town, and we don’t know how to replace it if it gets contaminated,” Bunker said.

The biggest wins as far as mitigation measures go, Stoedter said, were related to water quality. First, the county can test and verify water quality in the mining area before and during operations.

“At any time, we could go in, test the water and see if there’s contamination,” he said. 

Second, Maverick Rock must not excavate within 100 feet of the two Daniel wells. Bunker argued the buffer should be larger.

Heber City Mayor Heidi Franco echoed that sentiment, commenting that the county should do a groundwater study before finalizing the buffer’s size.

Time, however, was not on the county’s side.

County Councilor Luke Searle made a motion to delay the vote to next week’s meeting, which died as soon as Stoedter explained the fragility of the current agreement, which is a product of tense negotiations for the past two weeks.

“It’s conditioned in this agreement that we approve it or deny it today. So, if we further delay it, that could take this agreement off the table. They could sue us, and then, it’s not the council getting this mitigation. We’re back in litigation, and the court’s going to decide if we get any mitigation or not,” Stoedter said. 

Most importantly, Maverick Rock has estimated up to $50 million in potential damages incurred by the county. Stoedter said delaying approval of the settlement agreement would increase the likelihood of the mining company suing the county over those damages.  

County Manager Dustin Grabau said those costs could be passed on to county residents.

“That financial risk to the county is potentially something that would be obligated to be passed on to taxpayers. Some entities can end up with a very large judgment, and it ends up as an additional property tax line item because of the size of the judgment. That’s something that we’re trying to avoid,” he said.

That was ultimately why the County Council approved the agreement by 4-2 vote. Searle and Colleen Bonner were the “no” votes.

“As a council, we are pretty unanimous in our disagreement with this mine. We don’t want it. We know the public has expressed their opinion very vocally. They don’t want it. And we have tried using every measure we can to fight this,” said County Councilor Erik Rowland. “We’re in a position now where we recognize that this is more than just a mine or a blight on a hillside, but significant costs to the taxpayer and the county as a whole.”

The county’s last attempt to fight the mine will be in the Utah Court of Appeals. The county filed an appeal to Mabey’s ruling on Monday. If the Court of Appeals were to side with Wasatch County, Maverick Rock would be required to go through the conditional use permitting process through the County Council.

Grabau ultimately hopes for an adjustment to state code that would clarify that a mining company could not expand into another county with little input from local government just because the materials they mine are also found in that area.

“We’ve been working with our own lobbyists, with other local governments that are subject to these very same issues. We have partners at the Utah Association of Counties and the Utah League of Cities & Towns. I think we have a lot of allies. We even met with the Division of Natural Resources, who was of the same opinion that this code should not apply in this way,” he said.

The matter is one of state versus local authority, Stoedter said.

“There’s kind of a trend of removing the local authority on these types of decisions. And that’s exactly what this law does,” he said.

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Many of the dozens of chickens, goats, horses, pigs, mini donkeys, cats and dogs on Mary Wynne’s nearly four-acre property in Daniel were happy accidents.

There was the 300-pound pig next door that kept digging holes under her fence, escaping the butcher like the star of a “Chicken Run” knockoff. The exasperated neighbor let Lynne keep the fortunate fugitive.

“There were seven of them, and six of them went to the barbecue truck,” Wynne explained. 

A pregnant orange cat also took refuge on Wynne’s property inside a stack of Wrangler tires and gave birth to five kittens — a “genius” move on the mother’s part, she said. Wynne had the cats spayed and neutered, keeping the mama and one of her kits while finding homes for the rest.

The nomadic, “nice rooster” arrived six months ago — a marked improvement from another “mean” rooster she’d rescued off the side of the road. 

“There’s a sign above her house for all the animals that says, ‘You can have free food and friends,’” said Wynne’s daughter-in-law, Paige Pribble. 

The latest to take up the invitation was none other than a blue peacock. Strangely enough, he wasn’t the first of his kind to wander onto Wynne’s property. 

Close to 10 years ago, a peacock, which had belonged to a neighbor who raised the birds, tried to move in. So when this new peacock began hanging around, Wynne rang up her neighbor, who said the bird was not his.

When this blue peacock started wandering around Wynne’s yard last week, he quickly became buddies with her chickens.

“The peacock decided the chicken coop wasn’t up to his standards,” she said. “It just sleeps on the doormat, and then at night, it flies up in the trees.”

Wynne began calling the peacock Harry Styles after a heated debate with Pribble about whether JLo or Lenny Kravitz might be a more suitable name for the bird.

The peacock subsisted on a diet of Goldfish crackers, chicken food and cucumbers for a few days. Preparing to become the bird’s mother, Wynne then visited Tractor Supply to buy game bird food for it.

Yet she was sure the peacock was somebody’s lost pet.

“In the morning, it goes up in the trees, and at 6:45 in the morning, it starts screaming. And then it flies down. And if I don’t get out fast enough, it comes around and starts pecking my front door,” she said. “It’s somebody’s pet for sure. … It’s a needy peacock.”

After posting about Harry Styles — the bird, not the man — on Facebook, Wynne’s suspicion was confirmed: the peacock was her neighbor Elisa Skilton’s.

The bird is named Blue. He lives with his female counterpart, Red. The pair are foster pets from Wasatch Wanderers, a Utah-based animal rescue focused on farm and exotic animals. Wasatch Wanderers has no physical location and is instead made up of foster families across the state who care for the animals until they are adopted.

Skilton is part of the foster-to-adopt program. She’s admired peafowl since childhood and currently owns one lonely peahen in want of friends. So, Wasatch Wanderers reached out to her when the organization came into possession of Blue and Red two months ago. 

Skilton is currently keeping the pair in her barn, following the protocol of Wasatch Wanderers, which recommends keeping peafowl in a large, enclosed space for at least six to eight weeks before letting them roam freely. If peafowl don’t have that period to get familiar with their new home, they tend to wander off. 

Blue wasn’t happy with being cooped up, so he tore a hole in a mesh window of the barn and made his escape. 

“(Peafowl are) probably the most wandering animal that we’ve helped,” laughed Wasatch Wanderers President Adri Ballif.

That tendency to wander is exactly why Blue and Red were put up for adoption in the first place. Their previous owner, who has a farm in Murray, kept getting complaints that the peafowl were visiting neighbors’ front porches and making a mess. 

But Skilton thinks the birds will be right at home in Daniel, where they’ll have much more room to roam and neighbors like Wynne, who are more accustomed to animal visitors.

Besides, as Wynne put it, “Daniel’s a good place to be different.”

Peafowl are not native to Utah. Even the colonies of feral peafowl found in the Salt Lake area were once domesticated birds, Ballif explained. 

That makes peafowl particularly vulnerable to Utah’s native predators and traffic.

Ballif recommends calling animal control upon the discovery of stray peafowl. If the owner does not come forward to claim it, animal shelters will often reach out to Wasatch Wanderers for help finding it a home. 

But that only happens a few times a year.

Wasatch Wanderers currently does not have other peafowl available to foster or adopt, but does have guinea pigs, rats, tortoises, lizards, snakes, frogs, chickens, goats, pigs and cows looking for homes.

Going into the spring, Ballif said the biggest need for Wasatch Wanderers will be foster and adoptive homes for domestic ducks, which are often purchased at big box stores in infancy and abandoned at ponds by owners regretting their impulse purchase.

Abandoning any domestic animal is a crime per Utah code. 

Prospective feather-, scale- and fur-parents can visit wasatchwanderers.org to fill out an application to foster or adopt an animal.

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