Division of Air Quality Gets Boost From Lawmakers

Mar 11, 2008 by Eric Ray

(KCPW News) The Environmental Protection Agency enacted more stringent air quality standards for particulate pollution in late 2006. Those standards have put the squeeze on Utah's Division of Air Quality, which received an extra $2 million per year from the legislature this session to help tackle the problem.

"We're going to use that money to develop solutions to the problem. We have to put together a pretty complex set of analysis looking at monitoring and modeling predicting what the solutions would do if we were to put them into place," says Cheryl Heying, Director of the Division of Air Quality.

While weather has helped this winter, the Salt Lake and Cache Valleys have consistently violated the new standards since they were implemented, she says. The job of cleaning up Utah's air could become even more difficult in the coming days, Heying adds, as the EPA is expected to lower the acceptable level of so-called "bad ozone," the pollution Utah experiences during the summer months.

"The EPA proposed revising the standard last year. They've been pretty closed about what the new standard will be, but they're leaking that it will be tight. Anything that will tighten that standard will put us in a situation where we are going to have to go after that new standard too," says Heying.

The division also received an additional $200,000 in one-time money from lawmakers for the next fiscal year. Heying says some of the money will be used to purchase a mercury monitor to help track mercury emissions.

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