Pub. 6 2016 Issue 2

10 AT THE CENTER OF UTAH INDUSTRY Finding a Better Way to Fix Utah’s Air Quality Problems By Stephen W. Smithson Article originally appearing in The Enterprise-Utah’s Business Journal’s Oil, Gas & Energy focus issue A cross the Wasatch Front and throughout the state of Utah, we face increasing challenges related to air quality. The question we should ask is “Are we going to continue to address these issues the same way we have, or can we do something better?” Wasatch Front counties have long been constrained in their ability to grow economically due to restrictions imposed as a result of occasional exceedances of the federal National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) for PM10 (fairly course particulate matter). As a result, decades ago, the State adopted PM10 State Implementation Plans (SIPs) to control PM10 emissions for most of theWasatch Front. Fortunately, the State recently was able to propose revised, less-constraining SIPs, which SIPs are subject to approval by the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), because Utah has been able to demonstrate attainment of the PM10 NAAQS through 2030. This was a tremendous achievement for Utah, and for the health and economic well-being of its citizens. There was also a tremendous economic cost, undoubtedly in the billions of dollars, and primarily borne by Utah industry (notably, Utah mining), associated with this achievement. Meanwhile, the state recently adopted SIPs for PM2.5 (much finer particulate matter) for roughly the same areas impacted by PM10. PM2.5 is the primary pollutant of concern during our wintertime inversions. It is unquestionably important to control PM2.5 emissions, both because of the direct health impacts during inversions and because of the indirect economic impacts caused by adverse public reaction to the inversions. Unfortunately, however, it seems unlikely that Utah will be able to attain compliance with the short-term PM2.5 NAAQS because of the unique physical conditions associated with the Wasatch Front and because of the low concentration set for attainment of the NAAQs. Moreover, in order to pencil in a compliance plan that eventually might theoretically lead to attainment, Utah needed to severely restrict both growth of existing operations across theWasatch Front and the possibility of any new growth. Consequently, it seems likely that compliance costs will be high and that lost economic growth costs will be especially high. Part of the reason for these high compliance costs and for the lost economic growth is the fact that Utah is hampered by the federal Clean Air Act and its implementing regulations as to how Utah can craft its SIPs. Under current law, there is little that Utah can do about this first problem. (Although, Utah recently engaged in some effective, creative legislative work to provide economic incentives for our refineries to produce Tier 3 gasoline precisely in order to work around one of the Clean Air Act’s limitations and to thereby hasten the reduction of PM2.5