Utah is pushing back against ever-tightening EPA air pollution standards

Salt Lake City sits in a bowl of a mountain valley where dirty air can get trapped for days during winter inversions.Salt Lake City sits in a bowl of a mountain valley where dirty air can get trapped for days during winter inversions.SALT LAKE CITY, Utah — When it comes to its chronically poor winter air, Salt Lake City already has topography working against it.

"It's been an issue forever," Nelson says."But with a booming population and industry and exhaust, and now the potential for these dust storms from the Great Salt Lake, we're making a known problem much, much worse."There is mounting pressure to fix this problem, especially with Salt Lake City poised to again host the winter Olympics, and as more out of state transplants move here unaware of the notorious winter pollution.

"The good news is through our monitoring, we're showing marked progress in particulates and we're hoping to see the same thing with ozone," Sowards says."But there are still some challenges there."that includes things like electric vehicle incentives and energy retrofits for businesses. It's on the fast track, due by March first, as the money would come from President Biden's Inflation Reduction Act.

Republican leaders are particularly frustrated over new tighter ground level ozone rules in recent years. They say Utah will never be able to comply with them because increasingly the pollution and haze in the summer is coming from regional wildfire smoke.Utah Republican Governor Spencer Cox is quick to note that despite adding at least two million more people, Utah's air generally is cleaner than it was fifty years ago.

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