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With the 2015 legislative session winding down, no legislation aimed at improving Utah's notorious air quality has reached the finish line. Some clean-air measures are dead, while other bills have surfaced that could undermine efforts to improve air quality.
The most controversial would limit the Department of Environmental Quality's power to regulate wood burning. Rep. Brad Dee, R-Ogden, introduced House Bill 396, which is set to be heard by a House committee Tuesday, in response to Gov. Gary Herbert's recent proposal for a winter-long burn ban.
Residential wood burners inundated DEQ with comments denouncing the idea and the agency has signaled it would rework the proposed rule to accommodate cleaner-burning stoves. But some observers say the state's failure to educate the public on the need for greater burning limits has not only doomed the proposed ban, but also politically undermined other clean-air initiatives.
"The issue of wood burning comes up at every committee meeting I've attended. It has permeated the entire discussion of air quality," said Tim Wagner, executive director of Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment. "That's unfortunate because wood smoke is only part of the problem. The Legislature is using this as a wedge to push back other kinds of regulations and measures that would improve our air quality."
Utah Physicians is banding together with other groups Tuesday to denounce what they say is a pattern of lame excuses from Utah lawmakers for opposing clean-air bills and appropriations.
But it's too early to declare the session a bust, according to Herbert's environment advisor, Alan Matheson.
"A lot is going to happen in the coming days. We set out an aggressive air quality plan," Matheson said. "The legislation is plugging along and we are hopeful that we will get the bills and the appropriations to make progress in air quality."
Among Hebert's requests is an ongoing $1 million in funding for air quality research. Two Republican-sponsored bills remain alive in the Senate.
Rep. Stephen Handy's HB49 would direct $20 million to replace old diesel school buses and to build compressed natural gas fueling infrastructure. Rep. Rebecca Edwards' HB226 would enable the DEQ to implement air quality standards that are "different" from their federal counterparts, so long as the additional regulations can be proven to protect public health and the environment.
University of Utah political scientist Dan McCool credits these bills' survival to framing.
"Any issue that is framed as a regulation will run into an ideological wall. If you ban wood stoves it is seen as a limit on personal liberty," McCool said. The bills from Edwards and Handy have both cleared the House and withstood critical Senate hearings Monday.
Their sponsors described these measures as an investment to help school kids and an effort to distance Utah from the federal government, respectively. Those frames resonate with Utah's conservative lawmakers, McCool said.
Among this session's casualties are a proposed repeal of the prohibition on air quality rules that are tougher than federal standards, and an increase in Utah's tire disposal fee to fund air quality programs, including Handy's school bus replacements.
"What does this have to do with tires? There is no connection between tires and air quality. None," said Rep. Mike Noel, R-Kanab, as he interrupted a physician's recent testimony on diesel emissions in support of the tire-fee bill.
Activists highlighted this remark and others by conservative lawmakers, decrying them as excuses to not act. Most troubling for them is a common refrain from Sen. Scott Jenkins — that Utah air quality has never been better.
Evidence does support the Plain City Republican's observations, and the legislative session coincided with some of the best winter air quality seen in years. But his critics note that Utah's air quality problems are episodic and naturally variable. Pollution-trapping weather patterns are proven to concentrate ozone and particulate matter near the ground, threatening the health of the elderly, young and other vulnerable groups.
Jenkins "ignores the fact that we can still have some nasty inversions," Wagner said. "This season is cleaner because we haven't had the meteorological conditions for it to happen. If we had 6 inches of snow on the ground and colder temperatures, we would have had bad inversions."