Trump administration wants to weaken our air standards 

Utah’s Governor and legislative leaders have been trying to get the EPA to not hold northern Utah accountable to comply with national ozone standards for the last three years. They cite that a significant portion of our ozone comes from foreign sources and therefore is beyond the state’s control. The Biden EPA didn’t buy that argument, but the Trump EPA seems like they will.

The Salt Lake Tribune reported on the new EPA Administrator comments, “we are also helping states across our nation prosper while ensuring they continue to provide clean air for their residents.”

“The American Lung Association recently ranked the Salt Lake City-Provo-Orem region as the ninth worst in the nation for ozone pollution.”

Yes, some of our ozone is “imported” and we can’t control that. Every state and city could make that claim. But that’s hardly the point. The point is that regardless of where the ozone originates, it is harmful to all of us and deadly to some. Already up to 8,000 Utahns die every year due to our air pollution, some of them are children. We should do whatever we can do for our own health and well being, and that’s essentially what the Biden EPA concluded. 

But our lawmakers and the Trump EPA have the perverse view that air quality regulations are a punishment, not a benefit, because they prioritize business over our health and well being, making money above literally saving lives. And not just business in general, but dirty energy business in particular.  Not only are these grossly misplaced priorities, but it is even poor economics as many studies have shown. The greatest economic benefit to the Wasatch Front would be to purge us from the plague of air pollution.  

We condemn the Trump Administration and our state lawmakers for their badly misplaced priorities, and their callousness and cruelty towards their own constituents.