State approves an air-quality study

Both Dr. Brian Moench of Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment and Rick Sprott, soon-to-be-chief of the Utah Department of Environmental Quality, are pleased that a special panel will review the adequacy of clean air rules.

But a cloud may be hovering on the horizon: Moench wants the review done within eight months, while Sprott cautions that such a timetable is only tentative and the study should be done "with due speed but be thorough."

On Wednesday, the Utah Air Quality Board met to discuss recommendations that the physicians group has been making for the past couple of months. Citing alarming statistics of death and health damage caused by air pollution, they have asked for much tighter regulations.

The group says Utah should reduce air pollutants by 20 percent using strategies like auto taxes based on a car's miles per gallon, expand mass transit and make it free, reduce speed limits on the Wasatch Front to 55 mph on bad air days, impose a moratorium on new coal-fired power plants, and retrofit existing power plants.

The board voted unanimously to implement a study of the state's air pollution control laws to check whether they are adequate, in light of the doctors' requests, noted Sprott. A panel will be appointed to make the review.

"We're pleased that they've responded to our request in a definitive manner and seem to be taking our request seriously," Moench said.

While that's a positive step, he said, "we have some concerns about a recommendation on a scientific panel in that we want to make sure that these are in fact independent experts."

Moench said the reviewers should be free of industry pressure or political bias of any type. "We take them (board members) at their word that these experts in fact will fit that requirement," he added.

However, as in any government bureaucracy, "the potential danger exists for this to be a long, drawn-out investigation or analysis."

Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment has already put a great deal of time into analyzing the data, and he feels confident that the information backs up their feelings of alarm. But he fears "this could get drawn out long enough to turn into a foot-dragging issue."

The proposed timetable, in which the analysis would be finished during January 2008, is "reasonable if they adhere to it," Moench said.

State law requires that Utah environmental rules can be no stricter than their federal counterparts, unless a formal determination is made that the federal regulations are inadequate to protect the public.