By Judy Fahys

| The Salt Lake Tribune

Federal regulators have put the state on notice that another year of high ozone readings in Uintah and Duchesne counties will mean pollution controls might be ordered as early as 2013.

The warning was tucked deep in a December letter to Gov. Gary Herbert confirming the good news that ozone levels in Utah’s urban counties — Salt Lake, Davis and part of Weber, in particular — are low enough that an ozone crackdown is not warranted, as the state once thought it would be.

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Noting that high readings have been recorded on the Uintah and Ouray Indian Reservation over the past two winters, the EPA said it would designate the two eastern Utah counties "unclassifiable," or in a gray zone signaling uncertain status for now.

"Should regulatory data continue to show violations," said the Dec. 8 letter from James B. Martin, EPA’s Denver regional administrator, "a designation of nonattainment [in violation of clean air standards] could happen as early as 2013."

Avoiding an EPA crackdown in the basin has been at the heart of an ambitious collaboration between scientists, regulators and industry to learn what can be done to reduce winter ozone pollution. It was a group effort directed by Herbert, who doesn’t want to see the state’s energy boom stifled by the federal government.

Though the letter does not go into detail, it does say that high levels of ozone have been a problem in Uintah and Duchesne counties.

Two winters ago, monitors at remote spots in the Uinta Basin — Red Wash and Ouray — logged 40 days when ozone levels reached levels considered "unhealthy" by the EPA. Last winter, the highest readings exceeded EPA’s standard on 25 days.

Ozone is typically a problem in the summer in big cities like Los Angeles. By EPA’s health-based standards, the air quality is deemed unhealthy when concentrations reach or exceed 75 parts per billion.

So air-quality officials were surprised when monitoring in the rural Utah counties showed some of the highest ozone measurements in the nation — in one case at the Ouray monitor measuring double the EPA allowable level.

With just 30,000 residents, the basin has long been considered too rural to check for air pollution. Based on similar problems in Wyoming and Colorado oil and gas country, there is reason to suspect that emissions from the basin’s thousands of energy production wells play a significant role.

This winter, research teams led by the state and the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration are looking into the problem in a series of studies estimated to cost about $5.5 million. The Western Energy Alliance, a trade group for the oil and gas industry, has promised to chip in more than $1 million toward the effort.

Amanda Smith, director of the Utah Department of Environmental Quality, said she doubted the EPA will have sufficient data to push the issue anytime soon, since three years of official monitor readings are needed and because ozone levels haven’t been very high this year.

In addition, she said, much of the Uinta Basin is tribal land that is regulated by the EPA instead of the state. And that means the EPA will have some ozone regulation of its own to do.

"I don’t think they’re prepared to do that," she said.

Meanwhile, the studies will continue. "We can’t underplay the seriousness of the issues," Smith said.

Uintah County Commissioner Mike McKee agreed that the low levels of ozone this winter mean it’s unlikely the EPA will mandate controls as soon as next year.

"There have been tremendous efforts," he said, noting the aggressive scientific study that’s been undertaken to understand the problem. "We don’t want to have a shotgun approach."