Warning: Inversion looms for northern Utah even as state amps up air monitoring

When Richard Holman moved to his Rose Park home in 2016, he found a community where he fit.

Neighbors grew close to his family. He even formed the Westside Coalition to highlight minority voices on Salt Lake City’s west side.

Six months later, though, his health started to deteriorate.

“I couldn’t breathe,” Holman said. “I woke up every day and coughed for a full 20 or 30 minutes until I could get an airway.”

The coughing bouts didn’t stop until he moved to Sandy in search of better air to breathe. It wasn’t an easy choice, he said, but changing locales improved his health. Though Holman is no longer a west-sider, he remains instrumental in environmental efforts in the area.

With help from partners, the Westside Coalition petitioned the Environmental Protection Agency to conduct an environmental justice assessment of the west side. Finalizing the details of the request took a couple of years, but that analysis is now on track.

Other efforts — including more air quality monitoring sites — target the west side because it is home to a disproportionate number of polluting industries. The area is still plagued by some of the nation’s worst air, and this year’s inversion season is just kicking in.

Inversion started

Snow showers have covered the Salt Lake Valley most of this week, clearing particles from the air. Wednesday was a good air quality day at Rose Park, according to air quality monitors at the Salt Lake Center for Science Education.

But conditions are expected to change this weekend.

Skies are forecast to be hazier as an inversion settles over the Salt Lake Valley, with fine particulate matter reaching higher numbers and necessitating mandatory action from the Utah Division of Air Quality.

Northern Utahns are being asked to reduce driving and avoid open burning. On Wednesday, PM 2.5 levels were 2 micrograms. Those numbers are expected to jump to between 12.5 and 35.4 micrograms Friday.

“Our big particulate window is December, January, February and the first part of March,” said Bo Call, an air monitoring manager for the division. “During those inversion periods, where we can get higher numbers than the rest of the year, we’re generally really good with a couple of notable exceptions: wind storms, wildfire and fireworks” — which pose concerns during summers and falls as severe drought persists.

The good news is that the air is getting cleaner overall, Call said, compared to past decades.

“The standards are getting tighter, and people are becoming much more aware of things,” Call said. “I still talk to a lot of people thinking the air is getting worse, but it’s actually getting cleaner, cars getting cleaner. Everything that we do is cleaner.”

Utah’s rapid growth, however, is a concern because that is expected to bring more pollution. But, in future decades, the transition to electric vehicles could ease the issue, he said, because half the pollution is emitted by cars.

That might not be enough.

“We’re still a nonattainment zone (below-standard air quality conditions),” said Holman, warning that the possible expansion of Interstate 15 might bring more bad air. “We don’t have electric semis, and we don’t have electric trains. We’re still burning diesel, through those trains and through those trucks, and we’re increasing the capacity of a highway to accommodate those trucks and those trains to service an inland port and a transportation hub at the international airport.”

Monitoring to find solutions

The Utah Division of Air quality installs monitors in strategic areas, depending on density and where models show there could be high concentrations of pollutants.

The west side, for example, includes major highways, railways, refineries and an expanding airport.

The monitoring station on Liberty Wells’ Hawthorne Elementary School was the division’s highest pollution site. But that has been shifting.

“This one [Rose Park] has slowly been creeping up,” Call said. “Now it’s Hawthorne and Rose Park to kind of go neck and neck and back and forth to which one has the highest values.”

New monitoring sites are scheduled for Brigham City, Summit County, Wasatch County and Moab, Call said. Most air quality monitors in Salt Lake County are on the west side, and they will increase in the near future.

The west side caught the attention of the Biden administration, which approved a grant to install 40 particulate matter sensors in Magna, West Valley City and some northwest Salt Lake City neighborhoods in November.

The effort is part of the EPA’s focus on communities that are underserved, historically marginalized and overburdened by pollution.

Though stepped-up monitoring can lead to solutions, Holman worries about the west side’s future, especially given a potential I-15 expansion and the arrival of the Utah Inland Port.

“How much more traffic is that going to bring to the area?” Holman asked. “And how are we ever able to attain environmental quality when we’re continually adding pollutants to the airshed?”

Alixel Cabrera is a Report for America corps member and writes about the status of communities on the west side of the Salt Lake Valley for The Salt Lake Tribune. Your donation to match our RFA grant helps keep her writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by clicking here.