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Major copper mining and refining company

Kennecott Utah Copper LLC (KUC), a division of Rio Tinto Group, is a mining, smelting, and refining company. Its corporate headquarters are located in South Jordan, Utah. Kennecott operates the Bingham Canyon Mine, one of the largest open pit copper mines in the world in Bingham Canyon, Salt Lake County, Utah. The company was first formed in 1898 as the Boston Consolidated Mining Company. The current corporation was formed in 1989. The mine and associated smelter produce 1% of the world's copper.

Utah Copper Company had its start when Enos Andrew Wall realized the potential of copper deposits in Bingham Canyon, 15 mile (24 km) southwest of Salt Lake City, Utah in 1887. He acquired claims to the land and started underground mining. In the mid 1890s, metallurgist Daniel C. Jackling and mining engineer Robert C. Gemmell inspected the property and liked the prospects. Both men examined Wall's properties and recommended open pit mining. In 1898, Samuel Newhouse and Thomas Weir formed the Boston Consolidated Mining Company. With financing from Guggenheim Exploration, the first digging began in 1906. The same year, the Kennecott Mines Company was formed in Alaska, named after explorer and naturalist Robert Kennicott. A smelter was also started at Garfield, Utah by the American Smelting and Refining Company (ASARCO) to refine the Bingham Canyon ore. In 1981, after a worldwide fall in copper prices, Standard Oil of Ohio (SOHIO) acquired Kennecott. Production was interrupted from 1985 to 1987. In 1986, Asarco purchased the Ray mine in Arizona from Kennecott. In 1987, British Petroleum acquired SOHIO, and Kennecott became part of BP Minerals America. In 1989, Rio Tinto Zinc (RTZ) purchased mining assets from BP. Kennecott Utah Copper Corporation was formed by Rio Tinto in 1989 as a new mining company under the laws of the State of Utah.

Today, the second largest copper producer in the US, Kennecott Utah Copper provides about 8% of the US annual copper consumption of 1,700,000 tonnes. Kennecott’s Bingham Canyon Mine is the largest man made excavation in the world. It is one of the top producing copper mines in the world with cumulative production over of copper. Since Rio Tinto purchased Kennecott Utah Copper in 1989, it has invested about $2 billion in the modernization of KUC’s operations. In 2020, Kennecott Utah Copper directly employed 2,171 people and contributed to more than 14,000 indirect Utah jobs. Rio Tinto Group, one of the world's largest mining operations, comprises dual listed companies Rio Tinto Limited (based in Melbourne) and Rio Tinto PLC (based in London). Although each company trades separately, the two Rio Tintos operate as one business. The company says there’s still as much ore in the ground as miners have taken out of Bingham Canyon since it began production in 1906. The company proposes to expand the mine and reach an additional 700 million tons of ore resource by pushing back the south wall of the Bingham Canyon Mine 1,000 feet and deepening it 300 feet.

Significant groundwater contamination exists in the aquifer downgradient of the Bingham Canyon mining operations. Starting in the late 1980s, the State of Utah Natural Resource Damage Trustee has overseen the investigation of mining influenced groundwater and the implementation of cleanup actions performed by Kennecott and the Jordan Valley Water Conservancy District to address two groundwater plumes located in southwest Salt Lake County. The plumes were caused by historical mining practices in the Kennecott South Zone. Approximately 80 square miles (207 km2) are impacted in the southwest portion of Salt Lake County. Because of the remediation efforts, which include more than a $100 million investment in a reverse osmosis facility, Kennecott's South End, (location of the contaminated aquifer) was removed from the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) National Priorities List (NPL). This investment represents one of many remediation projects along the Oquirrh Mountains to clean up historic mining sites. To date, Kennecott Utah Copper has remediated more than of the total impacted by mining at a cost of more than $450 million. KUC has spent more than $350 million on the cleanup of historic mining waste and $100 million on groundwater cleanup. Kennecott's copper mine concentrators, power plant and smelter is the leading facility for toxic releases in the state of Utah, according to a 2017 report by the US Environmental Protection Agency. The company's combined operations are believed to account for 3.5 percent of Salt Lake Valley's air pollution, according to Utah Department of Air Quality statistics. Editorialists continue to criticize Kennecott for the amount of lead the smelter puts into the air each year:
Environmental groups have lauded Rio Tinto’s decision to drop its requested permit for a new rock crushing plant at the copper mine. Kennecott originally wanted the crusher to shore up a mine waste pond. Kennecott now says it can keep mining without expanding its tailings impoundment. In January 2012, the Utah Department of Health's Environmental Epidemiology Program (EEP) received a report from a concerned citizen stating that berm dust from the mine's tailing evaporation ponds was blowing onto Interstate 80, causing them malaise and sore throat each time they drove through it. The EEP recommended further studies to identify and quantify the levels of materials blown from the tailings ponds.

Another Rio Tinto owned company manages the non mining land and water assets previously owned by KUC, Kennecott Land Company. Kennecott Land was established by Rio Tinto in April 2001 to develop surplus mining land. Daybreak Community, the first part of the process, is situated on in the city of South Jordan where 20,000 homes and up to of commercial space are planned. Opened in 2009, Daybreak's first commercial center, SoDa Row, contains a boutique, restaurants, hair salon and more.

During the copper strike of 1912, Utah Copper Company brought many Mexican and Mexican American strikebreakers to the Bingham mine. Most of them did not remain after the settlement of the strike. Company records reveal that, by 1918 19, large numbers of Spanish surnamed individuals began to be employed at the mine, and additional Latinos were recruited during the labor shortages of WWII. For many of these men, it marked the beginning of long careers as copper workers. Issues of the company magazine 'Kennescope' in the 1950s emphasized the diversity of the work force. In 1953, there were 20 ethnic backgrounds, from Native American to Japanese. Kennecott laid off 200 workers in March 2016 due to a fall in global commodity prices.