This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Well, shucks.
I wish I'd known about this:
— Utah municipalities on the hook for polluting waterways with thousands of gallons of sewage — Emma Penrod | The Salt Lake Tribune
" ... Alan Matheson, executive director of the Utah Department of Environmental Quality, has recognized the growing number of illegal discharges into Utah's waterways as one of the department's top priorities for 2016. He said the department recently created a new position within the agency that will be responsible for educating municipalities and other discharging entities about their responsibilities. The new staffer will also be responsible for monitoring and reporting new spills to ensure proper response and cleanup. ..."
[The spills are small. The fines, paltry.]
Before we wrote this:
— No pay to play in water permit battles — Salt Lake Tribune Editorial
" ... In theory, a city-owned waste treatment plant — where operators are answerable to city councils, who are in turn responsible to the voters —might be less likely than private industry to want to sacrifice water quality to fiscal concerns. But local governments are also under a lot of pressure to save their own taxpayers and rate-payers money, and so might be tempted to decide that whatever flows downstream is someone else's problem. ..."
Not that it would have changed our view. But it might have made a stronger argument.