HEALTH
Utah winning the air quality battle
Jun 6, 2019, 10:59 AM
Air quality above Spanish Fork Canyon remained gray and smoky Monday morning, as observed from KSL Chopper 5.
SALT LAKE CITY — Utah is starting to win a 13-year battle to get off a government watch list.
The Environmental Protection Agency is proposing Salt Lake metro region be removed from the nonattainment designation after 13 years.
This includes Davis and Salt Lake counties as well as portions of Weber, Box Elder and Tooele counties.
The threshold was revised in 2006 and we were found out of compliance, and faced fines. The violations came because of 24-hour pollution standards for PM 2.5 which is fine particulate matter in the air.
Utah leaders and industry have been working hard on cleaning Utah’s air and over the last decade, emissions here have dropped 35 to 40 percent, even though the population has grown by 35 percent.
