The White Rim in Canyonlands offers a sweeping view of the national park, the La Sal Mountains and beyond — unless the air is hazy, blurring features and muting colors.

Regional haze from air pollution blocking the view of distant vistas is the main air quality issue around the national parks, but from the Wasatch Front to the Uintah Basin and the Colorado Plateau, different areas of Utah have varying air quality challenges.

And those issues could harm not just residents’ health, but also the state’s vibrant tourism industry and other economic sectors, Utahns from across the state told The Salt Lake Tribune.

Not being able to see part or all of Utah’s vast scenery because of haze, smoke or other air quality issues is a “big disappointment” for visitors, said Ashley Korenblat, CEO of Western Spirit Cycling, which offers guided mountain bike trips across the West.

If enough people have a disappointing trip and talk about it, she said, that will hurt Utah’s brand as an outdoor experience destination — especially as other western states step up their game.

“At some point, we will start to lose visitors,” she said.

Poor air quality, likewise, could affect the oil and gas industry in the Uintah Basin if regulatory pressure gets too strong, said Seth Lyman, director of Utah State University’s Bingham Research Center. The center conducts energy and environmental research, including on air quality in the Uintah Basin.

Most of the state’s oil and gas production is in the basin, and emissions contribute to the region’s unique winter ozone issues.

Though production has increased, there’s “good evidence for change, and more or less in the right direction” in air quality trends, Lyman said.

Oil and gas producers have taken multiple voluntary steps to reduce emissions even as they’ve doubled production in recent years, said Rikki Hrenko-Browning, president of the Utah Petroleum Association, a statewide oil and gas trade association.

Inversion, summer and winter ozone

Utah has two air pollution seasons, said Bryce Bird, who directs the Utah Department of Environmental Quality’s air quality division.

In winter, the Wasatch Front and Uintah Basin experience inversions, where cold air at the surface gets trapped under a layer of warmer air and makes pollutants build up to unhealthy levels.

That means emissions from vehicles and consumer products like single-stroke lawn equipment build up in the Salt Lake Valley, and oil and gas industry emissions build up in the Uintah Basin, especially when there is snow on the ground.

Inversions in the Wasatch Front frequently lead to particulate matter that exceeds federal air quality standards set for health reasons. But that doesn’t typically happen in the Uintah Basin unless it’s a snowy winter, Lyman said.

Summer presents different challenges, as wildfire smoke filters into the state’s valleys and basins, and hot, dry conditions make ground-level ozone a problem. Unlike the ozone layer in the upper atmosphere, ground-level ozone is created by chemical reactions when pollutants emitted by cars, power plants, refineries and other sources react in sunlight.

Ground-level ozone can inflame and damage airways and has other negative health effects, including increases in hospitalizations for asthma and a higher chance of fatal heart attacks. Other pollutants, like dust, can also irritate the lungs and — in the case of dust coming off the Great Salt Lake — introduce potentially harmful chemicals into our bodies.

View-impairing haze could affect tourism

Ozone isn’t visible, but dust and other pollution can appear as a haze that degrades visibility when the sun encounters tiny pollution particles in the air.

On the Wasatch Front, that can block the view across the Salt Lake Valley, making the Oquirrh Mountains invisible from the east side and making the Wasatch Mountains seemingly disappear from downtown.

To the south, coal-fired power plants in Emery and Millard counties cause haze that affects all of the “Mighty 5,” the state’s five National Parks that stretch from Zion to Arches, said Cory MacNulty, a regional campaign director for the National Parks Conservation Association.

In Capitol Reef, for example, human-caused haze impairs visibility and clarity about 79% of the time, she said. That means blurry features, a shorter field of view and muted colors, she said.

“When you have haze pollution, it really muddies the view,” MacNulty said.

That degrades the entire outdoor experience, Korenblat of Western Spirit Cycling said.

It’s disappointing for Korenblat as a guide when she takes people on a trip and “part of the thing you’re guiding people to see just isn’t there.”

There’s a nighttime effect too, MacNulty said.

“We think about clean air and these long views during the day,” she said. “But clean air also really affects our ability to see the constellations and experience the night skies.”

Utah has more than sites designated as “International Dark Sky Places,” more than any other state.

Kirstin Peterson, who used to own Rim Tours and now manages a campground in Moab, has lived in the area for more than three decades and said it seems the haze is more frequent in the last 10 years than it used to be.

The change is noticeable enough that when there is a crystal clear day, “you go, ‘oh wow, this is amazing,” Peterson said, but those clear days don’t happen as often as they should.

Peterson and Korenblat are frustrated that Utah is kicking the can down the road on transitioning away from coal-fired power.

“Utah can’t really just rest on our laurels,” Korenblat said.

That’s especially true as New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada and other western states step up their game, she said.

Tourism is “bread and butter” in Utah, MacNulty said, particularly in rural areas.

The industry generated $12.71 billion and supported 159,800 jobs in 2023, according to a report from the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute.

That includes millions in visitor spending in rural counties, based on individual county tourism profiles from the Gardner Institute.

For example, those profiles showed visitors spent:

• $110.6 million in Beaver County

• $186.6 million in Kane County

• $72.4 million in San Juan County

Korenblat worried that if Utah doesn’t protect its beautiful views by cleaning up the air, some of those tourism dollars will start going to other states competing for visitors.

There’s a “once-in-a-decade” opportunity now for the state to control pollution, MacNulty said, as the state proposes an implementation plan to the federal government to reduce haze pollution from some of its worst coal plants.

Yet the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said Utah didn’t include enough pollution controls in its plan and partially disapproved the state’s submission. The federal agency has the ability to issue its own plan describing how the state should address haze pollution, as the Clean Air Act mandates.

State Sen. Nate Blouin, D-Millcreek, was among several Utahns to send comments to the EPA and expressed concern that his fellow state government officials have abdicated “responsibilities to promote clean air for the health and welfare of our citizens and the economy of the state.”

“It is with great concern that I have watched the direction of regulatory policy in the state of Utah, shaped by actions of the legislature and executive branch, abdicate responsibilities to promote clean air for the health and welfare of our citizens and the economy of the state.

Blouin, an environmental advocate who works professionally on climate issues, also criticized fellow lawmakers for ignoring “sound scientific evidence,” and specifically calling out another member of the Legislature’s Natural Resources, Agriculture, and Environment Interim Committee for alleging that proximity to a saline body of water will prolong life expectancy and telling people to “go run, go bike, enjoy the state.”

“Compromised politicians have been attempting to cut out experts from the regulatory process for decades,” Blouin said.

EPA has until Nov. 22, 2024, to issue its final rule based on a consent decree signed by the U.S. District Court in response to a lawsuit from multiple environmental groups.

‘Becoming harder to create winter ozone in the Uintah Basin’

While haze continues to be a problem and ozone exceeds federal standards multiple times each summer along the Wasatch Front, Lyman said things are generally improving in the Uintah Basin.

Organic matter and nitrogen oxide levels in the air are decreasing, Lyman said — something USU’s Bingham Research Center tests using high-precision equipment.

Those measurements of ozone, reactive nitrogen compounds, speciated volatile organic compounds, particulate matter, and other air quality and meteorological parameters inform local, national and international studies.

The center’s work also helps improve models for regulators and the oil and gas industry, Lyman said.

Lyman and the rest of the team at Bingham Research Center have been working with the Utah Petroleum Association for a little more than three years to help with air quality issues using an alert system for ozone levels that includes forecasting.

Ozone alerts trigger a set of voluntary actions that Utah Petroleum Association members undergo to reduce emissions, Hrenko-Browning of that group said.

The association also has a voluntary program called “latch the hatch” that uses signage, contractor education and technology improvements to reduce emissions by making sure thief hatches — closable openings at the top of production tanks — are properly sealed.

That’s resulted in thousands of new gaskets, contract language requiring around a dozen hauling companies to ensure hatches are closed, the installation of 78 Lease Automatic Custody Transfer units that allow air sampling, and measuring of oil without opening a hatch and about two dozen flyovers to look for leaks.

Between “latch the hatch” and ozone alerts, there’s been a “significant decrease in emissions that cause ozone,” Hrenko-Browning said. The industry is proud of that, she said, especially since those reduced emissions have come hand in hand with producers nearly doubling production.

Newer wells have more controls, Lyman added, and several of them are going in above where inversion would trap the emissions.

“It’s definitely becoming harder to create winter ozone in the Uintah Basin,” Lyman said.

Last winter was an exception to that, he said. He also isn’t sure whether the trend of fewer winter ozone days will hold as oil and gas production increases. There aren’t enough years of data yet to tell, he said.

Utah Petroleum Association will keep working to help with air quality issues even if things keep trending the right direction, Hrenko-Browning said.

“We’re keenly aware of air quality challenges, particularly in the basin,” she said. “We know we carry a lot of that responsibility, so we’ve dedicated a lot of resources to stepping up.”

Megan Banta is The Salt Lake Tribune’s data enterprise reporter, a philanthropically supported position. The Tribune retains control over all editorial decisions.

Correction, 11:00 a.m. • This story has corrected the spelling of Capitol Reef National Park and the La Sal Mountains.

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