If you track international mining conglomerates and their foibles, you've most likely been enthralled by the imbroglio in which Australia's Rio Tinto has found itself as of late. Four employees of the firm, one of the world's largest producers—and one of China's major suppliers—of iron ore, were sentenced to between seven and fourteen years in prison by the Shanghai No. 1 Intermediate People’s Court yesterday for accepting millions of dollars of bribes from Chinese officials and illegally obtaining commercial secrets related to state-run steel companies. (The latter part of the trial was closed to the public, so it is impossible to know what actually constitutes a commercial secret in China.) Where did those millions go? Perhaps into the pristine lake that acts as the centerpiece of Daybreak, the Utah mega-development being built by Kennecott Land, Rio Tinto's U.S. real-estate subsidiary. Since Lucy Raven told the story of "the newest great dead American economy laying in wake atop the rumblings of the last one" in issue 7, the adjacent Bingham Canyon Mine has been further excavated, further revealing a geologic image of the earth 550 million years ago. There has also been an art walk, Daybreak's second:
Q. Do many of the artists involved live at Daybreak?
A. My wife and I bought a home here nearly three years ago. The beach-community vibe and architecture is what drew us here. Being from SoCal, it's a big difference from all the cookie-cutter new housing tracts around.
The new, artificial lake, which buries a brownfield, has a precedent. During the Pleistocene, Lake Bonneville covered Utah, its northwestern shore abutting the Oquirrh Mountains. As a real-estate feature, historical continuity across hundreds of millennia seems to have distinguished Daybreak: Last year it ranked sixth among leading American planned communities in number of homes sold.