Utah Foundation Releases Report on Utah's Air Quality and Environmental Concerns

Oct 23, 2008 by KCPW

(KCPW News by Faroe Robinson) A new report from the Utah Foundation examines the state's air quality and environmental concerns. Research analyst Laura Summers says Salt Lake City, Ogden and Provo have not met national attainment standards in past years for levels of carbon monoxide caused by motor vehicle emissions, wood burning stoves and industrial equipment.

"You know a large part of it is just due to kind of our geography, but then it's obviously not helped by the refineries, the vehicle admissions and the power plants that are emitting emissions as well, but if you do look at the long term graphs, air quality has been improving and we actually are within attainment for several of those criteria pollutants, and its only two of those where the state is currently out of attainment, but we are working to get that back in attainment," Summers said.

Hazardous waste transportation and storage was an important issue to Utahns surveyed in the report. Foundation President Steve Kroes says that of the EPA's 24 superfund sites in Utah, only nine have been cleaned up. He says one of the biggest issues is the transport of hazardous materials through Utah to the Yucca Mountain storage site in Nevada.

"The state of Nevada and some interest groups have complained that what the federal government has actually done isn't real crash tests with these casts, they have just sort of computer modeled what would happen if these things were involved in different kinds of crashes. But what is not clear is can they withstand a seventy mile an hour head on collision, so its not clear that the governments tests on these transportation casts have really been thorough enough," Kroes said.

The report found that climate change was the lowest area of concern for Utahns. Kroes says this may reflect skepticism among Utahns about the effects of global warming. For a link to the full report visit www.utahfoundation.org.

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