Air Pollution's Not Just for Cities Anymore

of the middle of winter in rural northeastern Utah. And yet rural northeastern Utah is indeed having some serious air pollution problems, and those problems are happening in wintertime, and that in turn is posing some weird political questions about how stringent air pollution regulation should be and who should enforce them. So what's going on here? Where is this pollution coming from? For answers, we turned to Patrick Ambrosio,

Bloomberg bna's reporter covering air regulations. Patrick said, the main issue in Utah is ozone. Now, ozone is good when it's way up high in the atmosphere, think the ozone layer. But it's very bad when it hangs around on the ground. Breathing in ozone has been shown to worsen asthma and a lot of other breathing problems. Ozone can show up if there are too many chemicals in the air that get emitted from cars, power plants, and oil wells. Patrick says.

The area in Utah that's having the problems, it's called the unit of Basin, has some pretty unique features that make it particularly vulnerable to bad air. The cold air helps to trap the pollution so the emissions don't disperse. This is winter pollution. Yeah, it's winter pollution. And the other factor also very winter dependent. They need snow cover, which doesn't sound like it would help, but it reflects the sunlight and actually makes the energy more powerful. Layer

It helps with the chemical reaction. In this area in northeastern is near to the winter basin. It's actually having trouble meeting the EPA standards. Is that right? Yeah, Yeah, it's right now. It's three year average, which is how they sort of determine whether or not you meet it. It's at eighty parts pavilion, which is ten above. That's on par with what use then is at, which is you know, big city, a lot of traffic, a lot of refineries, a lot of industrial development. The units of

Basin doesn't have that. What it does have is about eleven thousand oil and gas wells. There's a lot of development out there, smaller sources of pollution, but when you combine them all up, it's enough to put them over. So is this just a weird problem that's being faced only in this area where it just so happens that they have this weird climactic issue with the cold air pushed pressing down and keeping the pollutants in. And it also you know, there's a huge oil and gas industry

there or is this somewhere? Is this something that other rural areas with a lot of oil and gas development, are they going to also be facing this as well? So last fall I actually surveyed all the states to find out, you know, sort of what's not going to meet the ozone standards. They're not scheduled to make that decision until later this year, and what I found was it's a range of different types of areas they're going

to have these problems. So a lot of parts of the country are having problems with this sort of unique factors in all of them. Every area of the country has its own sort of unique meteorological conditions sources of where the pollution is coming from. But as far as the oil and guest stuff, a lot of states with oil and guest development are going to face some issues with the ozone standards. And we're talking about, you know, facing issues with those oone standards. What does that really mean?

What are these you know, states and cities going to have to do if they can't bring their pollution down to the to the EPA's new level. So what they will get is called non attainment status, which means they don't meet the standards. It imposes a number of requirements on the areas. The states have to come in and form their own sort of plan of how they plan

to bring pollution levels down over period of time. Stricter permitting requirements for new industrial facilities in an area that's like the UNITSA basin where the only real industry there is oil and gas development. That's where the bulk of the emissions reductions are going to have to come from. And part of that permitting is if you want to build something new in an area that already doesn't meet the standards, you need to get an offset, and that

can be pretty tough in a rural area. They may not be available, and if they're available, they might be pretty expensive because there's nobody selling. So these rural areas with pollution problems have a lot of incentive to get their ozone levels below the EPA's standards. But they also have a lot of incentive to try to, let's say, move the goalposts, because if you can't meet a goal,

maybe you can just make it easier to meet. We'll get to that in a second, but first, let's pause here for a moment to talk about Bloomberg bna's Daily Environment Report. It's a source for comprehensive coverage of the day's top environmental news, and it features reporting from Patrick, myself and all the other reporters you hear from regularly on Parts per Billion. Start a free trial of Daily Environment Report by visiting BNA dot com slash Daily podcast.

That's BNA dot com slash daily type in podcast. And we're back, and we're talking about ozone pollutions showing up in some unexpected places and at unexpected times. The rural areas struggling with pollution are facing a choice try to get these EPA standards eased up or place tighter restrictions in their local energy industry, which might be the only

thing their local economies have going for them. Patrick says, Sublack County and other rural area this time in western Wyoming was having similar problems, but they found a way to solve them. They didn't meet the Bush era standards, the seventy five PPB, but what they did is they imposed emissions controls on the oil and gas industry. They added some reporting requirements on top that helped, and now they're three are averages sixty four, so they're well below

even the new standard. They're not going to face a problem now. You know, we're talking about whether these areas will or will not be able to meet the new ozone standard of seventy pres per billion. But I get the sense that's not necessarily fixed in stone, that there are some discussions about, you know, at the EPA saying well, maybe we should raise that a little bit, or maybe we should go back to seventy five, or who knows.

What do you do you get a sense that with the new administration coming in with new priorities, do you think that these ozone standards could be changed and raised a little bit that would help these communities kind of stay out of trouble. It would be very difficult to raise the number. That was a scientific determination made by EPA Administrator Gena McCarthy. The attorneys 've talked to, even the industry people have talked to have said that's a very heavy lift. But what they talk about is the

potential but ease implementation of it. Give areas more time to come into compliance with the standards, make it easier to permit under the standards. Basically do things where you'll continue to get the reductions of emissions, but sort of ease compliance with it, whether it's over a longer period of time, or just make some of the requirements clearer. And they think that that could be an avenue that

could work. Manufacturers are optimistic at least that this two for one regulatory rule, this permitting memo, some of the other actions they've taken. They take it as a positive sign that the new administration is listening to what they have to say. I see. So it sounds like the number likely won't be changing, but the way that states and cities have to meet that number, or when they have to meet the number could be changing. I guess yeah. I would say that people have talked to view that

as sort of the more realistic path. Any effort to sort of change the Clean Air Act to do a legislative fix is going to be harshly opposed by environmental advocates. You know, people with the NRDC I've talked to have said we will fight back against any effort to roll back clean air protections like these. They're supported by a number of groups, the American Lung Association, the American Thoracic Society.

It's something that easing regulatory burdens is a good talking point, but not necessarily rolling back health protections is a little bit of a harder thing to do politically. Speaking of politically, let's just sort of think about the raw politics here. You know, air pollution, especially in Ozone in particular, would seem in the past to be mainly an urban problem. And you know, in this last election, cities went against

Trump by a huge margin. So on the one hand, you would think that there's not a huge motivation on the part of the Republican Party and a part of the new president to make life easier for cities. I guess for lack of a better word, but as you're reporting now, this is no longer just an problem. This is also something that a lot of rural areas are facing,

and maybe some suburban areas. Do you think that changes the political calculus about how these ozone standards are changed or the implementation has changed now that this is not just a big city air pollution issue, this is a sort of nationwide problem. Well, I will say what it has done is it's gotten them some new champions. Senator

Jeff Flake from Arizona. He last Congress he introduced some bills about ozone, both to delay the deadlines under the new standards, to address some sort of things with wildfires and that affect some areas out west their ability to meet the standards. So he's been championing championing some reforms. We'll have to see. I will say the pollution levels have kind of always been there, it's just the standard is now getting lower to where they're now caught up

in the regulatory process with it. There's a range of issues they don't want to, you know, block oil and gas development that's helping the economy in those regions. There's pollution from other countries where they're saying it's not fair that Arizona is going to have to impose these when we don't have to do anything. But that's not necessarily a new problem. Delaware has had the same thing for

a long time. Delaware officials like to say they could shut down their entire state economy and they still wouldn't meet the ozone standards because it all comes from power plants to the west of them. Bloomberg bna's Patrick Ambrosio. For more of his reporting on air pollution and other environmental issues, visit our website at BNA dot com. Pars Pavilion was produced by myself with help from Jessica Coombs, Rachel Dagel, and Marissa Horn. The music tracks for parts

Pavilion are a Message and Driver by Jazzaar. They were used under a Creative Commons attributions Share a Life license. More informations can be found at better Rian Music dot com.