Federal regulators are weighing a decision on Utah’s plan for cleaning up haze around the national parks.
The Environmental Protection Agency is asking for public input on two haze reduction plans. One’s been proposed by the Utah Division of Air Quality.
The other’s backed by environmentalists like Lindsay Beebe, who leads the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign in Utah. They say two coal-fired power plants in Emery County should be required to install hundreds of millions of dollars in new pollution equipment so the power company that owns them bears the cost of their emissions.
“We are trying to ensure that the industries that benefit,” says Beebe, “are able to internalize those costs so that we realize that coal is not a cheep electricity and that we have much better much cleaner alternatives available to us.”
She points out that over 200 power plants around the country are being required to install the same equipment.
Meanwhile, Utah DAQ officials defend their plan by saying it’s already been working for more than a decade and that the environmentalists are demanding equipment that won’t clean up the kind of pollution that’s causing trouble. Bryce Bird, director of the Utah Division of Air Quality, welcomes the EPA’s 60-day public comment process.
“We think that there is a path to good environmental regulation by having good information out there and good public dialog about that information,” he says.
The EPA plans a hearing at Salt Lake City’s Main Library on January 26. The agency will take comments on both strategies before it makes a final decision.
