county's obligation is preventative. It must be determined at the time of the approval that the use will not degrade public health or quality of life. Relying on complaints after impacts occur does not meet that standard, particularly in an area used for agriculture, hunting, and outdoor recreation.

The findings also failed to address risks to migratory birds and wildlife. Large open-water impoundments, including produced-water ponds, are well-documented hazards to migratory birds and waterfowl. Yet the findings contain no assessment of bird use in the region, no analysis of how expanding from 2 to 5 ponds increases exposure risk, and no findings linking wildlife impacts to land-use compatibility or public welfare. Wildlife resources are central to this region's economy and cultural identity, and failing to evaluate those impacts is failing to address a core public welfare concern. I also want to address a closely related defect in the April 2nd approval.

The findings do not assess the economic and long-term public welfare risks associated with expanding this facility from 2 to 5 ponds. Section 8-13-4 does not limit the county's analysis to immediate operational impacts. It actually requires a forward-looking determination based on evidence that the approved use will not be detrimental to public welfare over time. The record shows that the existing business arrangement supporting the facility is nearing the end of its permit term.

The findings contain no analysis of renewal risk, market demand, or the realistic duration of use associated with expanding long-term produced water storage from 2 homes to 5 with a 200-acre wastewater footprint. This omission matters. Large industrial wastewater facilities are not easily reversible uses, particularly in rural areas. When drought- when throughput declines, or contracts change, it is often the county and surrounding community that bear the long-term consequences in the form of stranded infrastructure, degraded land, and ongoing enforcement operations.

Approving a major expansion without addressing those foreseeable risks fails to satisfy the preventative public welfare standard imposed by the code. The economic risks also intersect directly with county capacity. A substantially larger facility increases the scope, frequency, and duration of county oversight related to liner integrity, leak detection systems, stormwater controls, odor management, and spill response. Yet the findings do not analyze whether those ongoing burdens are compatible with rural use. With rural service capacity or with the stated purpose of the A-5 Agricultural Zoning District, which is intended to preserve agricultural land rather than host long-term scale industrial wastewater operations.

Finally, none of these environmental and economic risks were evaluated cumulatively. The record shows that this facility operates in direct support of regional oil and gas development and alongside other energy-related uses in the same portion. Even if individual facilities comply with separate regulatory regimes, land use compatibility analysis requires examining how these uses function together on the ground. For these reasons, the Commission failed to meet specific evidence-based findings required to address the known risks inherent to large-scale produced water storage. It failed to evaluate how those risks increase with approved expansion. These defects, taken together, render the April 2nd approval unlawful and require reversal or, at a minimum, remand for proper findings. And what brings us here now is how these uses are being permitted and whether the county has complied with its legal duties under Duchenne County Code and Utah's Land Use Development and Management Act.

Since roughly 2018, the county's use of conditional use permits for oil and gas operations, energy generation, and large-scale mining has drifted away from lawful land-use decision-making and toward a pattern of negligent approvals, procedural shortcuts, and failures to protect public health, public land, and property values. This pattern did not develop in a vacuum. Over the same period, Duchesne County has experienced increasing pressure on Utah School and Institutional Trust lands. Other Utah public lands and landscapes that historically defined the county's agricultural and environmental character. As trust lands have been sold, auctioned, or positioned for intensified industrial use, and as access to public lands has become more constrained or effectively privatized in practice, the county's role as a steward of shared resources has steadily eroded over the years.

Historically, Utah said the trust lands and surrounding public lands were managed as