Above: Why we should care about air quality, from the Utah Department of Transportation Planning Division
- Pollution report: DEQ data both good, bad - Salt Lake Tribune Editorial
The Utah Department of Environmental Quality’s 2011 report on pollution [Trib article] contains some positive developments and also some worrisome trends.
Over the 20 years of the DEQ’s existence, as the report [DEQ website] points out, air quality along the Wasatch Front has shown some improvement. But, as Utahns who live within the state’s most urban corridor know all too well, there are too many days when visibility is nearly nil, when they cough, their eyes and throats get sore and chronic and even fatal illnesses worsen. That is not acceptable.
The Environmental Protection Agency in 2009 published a list of areas in the nation that do not meet new federal standards for fine particulate matter, or PM 2.5. All of Salt Lake and Davis counties, parts of Weber, Box Elder and Tooele counties, and low-lying portions of Utah and Cache counties are all on the list. Utah must come up with a plan to achieve compliance with the new rules by December of this year. ...
... The report gives no indication what the Radiation Control Board under DEQ will do with requests from EnergySolutions to be allowed to take depleted uranium and blended waste at its Clive disposal site. The DEQ should stand firm against both.
We are also concerned that Amanda Smith, executive director of DEQ, is also Gov. Gary Herbert’s energy adviser in the Office of Energy Development. While efforts to encourage renewable energy development might fit the DEQ’s mission to protect public health, oil and gas drilling and oil shale development seem at odds with what her role at the DEQ should be.
Related:
- Death-by-Air in Beijing Shows China’s Heart Risk From Worsening Pollution - Bloomberg News
- Region's air quality hinges on EPA limits on mercury, sulfur dixoide - Easton (Penn.) Express-Times Editorial
- Regulating power plants - Eugene (Ore.) Register-Guard Editorial
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- What we value: What home-health workers deserve - Salt Lake Tribune Editorial
If a society is measured by how it treats the most vulnerable among us, it is fair to say that it can also be measured by how it values those who care for those vulnerable people.
That’s why the U.S. Department of Labor is on the right track in proposing a new rule that would treat — or at least pay — home-health workers as the pros they are.
Since 1974, home-health workers have been exempt from federal wage and hour regulations. That is based on the idea that those who make a living seeing to the needs of the elderly and the handicapped in their patients’ own homes are worth no more, financially or socially, than the teenagers who pick up a little smart-phone money tending to their neighbors’ toddlers for an evening. ...
