This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated.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.
The recent proposal by Revolution Fuels LLC to convert up to 273,000 tons of coal per day into liquid fuel raises public policy issues that extend beyond this proposed facility. As air emissions are reduced from existing sources and from improvements in motor vehicles, should the reductions be used to reduce the adverse impacts on public health or should they be used to allow new sources of harmful emissions?
This requires a balancing of the need for economic growth against the need to protect the quality of life most people living in Utah desire. This balancing is distorted by weaknesses in the Clean Air Act (CAA) that mask the adverse impacts of development.
The CAA places the major responsibility for regulating stationary sources on state government, with the most stringent rules imposed on major sources. However, the federal definition of major source that is also used by Utah makes it possible to avoid the regulations for sources that the ordinary person would consider major. Major sources are those that emit 100 tons or more per year of any air pollutant. However, some industrial categories in areas that meet atmospheric air quality standards have a 250 tons per year threshold, and sources in areas that fail to meet the air quality standards may have a threshold less than 100 tons. Revolution Fuels proposes to emit 156.4 tons per year of conventional pollutants. But, because the source does not exceed 100 tons for any one pollutant, it is considered minor. Because it is minor, its emissions of 300,000 tons of carbon dioxide a year will go unregulated.
Moreover, because it is considered minor, the new source review process used to protect the atmospheric air quality is not required. In addition, Utah is working to comply with federal requirements to improve atmospheric visibility, but this proposed facility will add to the pollution from the nearby Hunter and Huntington Power Plants that adversely impact the national parks that are important to the state's economy.
Under the CAA, sources that emit any of the approximately 189 hazardous substances are also considered to be major if they emit 10 tons of any hazardous air pollutant or 25 tons of any combination of air pollutants. If Utah seriously desires to protect its environment, it would change its law to allow conventional pollutants to also be aggregated when determining whether a source is major.
The Revolution Fuels project may or may not deserve to be given a permit, but the existing law makes it difficult to properly evaluate a project's impact or to condition its permit to fully achieve the appropriate balance between the public benefits of air quality protection and economic development.
Arnold W. Reitze Jr., is a law professor at the S.J. Quinney College of Law at the University of Utah and a member of the Utah Air Quality Board.