Somebody somewhere (on one of several fb groups about Utahs air quality-or-lack-thereof) said something about opposing any funding for Utah DAQ. However, if you support that, take a look at EPAs 64-page comments on the last SIP draft (airquality.utah.gov/Public-Interest/Public-Commen-Hearings/Docs/12Dec/EPA_Comments.pdf). Now imagine being the DEQ/DAQ staffer whose desk those comments land on. You wouldnt sleep for a week. Knowing several people at Utah DEQ well, having worked with them for a long time, I can tell you that the problem is not that these people are not doing their job. The problem is that they have incredible amounts of political interference in their work, which I think leads to optimistic, minimized or otherwise biased assumptions coming out under the division directors signature. At the same time DEQ/DAQ are constantly on the chopping block at the legislature, or being otherwise down-funded. The same thing is happening on EPAs side, with lack of funding, furloughs, & sequesters (whoops! 10% of your budget to calculate air quality models is gone permanently!), not to mention Congressional antics. So these people need our support and civil encouragement to do a better job, not our rotten tomatos. The other problem is that what they are doing involves a lot of science & engineering and complicated decision rules. In their comments, EPA did DAQ (and us) a service by doing a very detailed walk-through of DAQs math and assumptions. The bulk of EPAs comments (at least in the first 5 pages-- I admit that I havent read through all 64 pages yet) involve catching math errors, and questioning inconsistencies in model assumptions. At the same time, things keep changing as EPA gets sued & rules change. So, the worst thing we can do for the health of animals with lungs is to threaten to take away DAQs funding because our air sucks. We should be fighting to increase it (while at the same time insisting that it be used to improve the risk assessment assumptions). Citizens who have the skills and/or time to donate, (or who would be willing to fund people who do this for a living i.e., professional people aka an environmental contractor) could actually do both DAQ and EPA (and ourselves) a service by providing some independent peer review of DAQs models. Between DAQs permit submission and EPAs comments, and the models, which are all publicly available, it could even be possible to come up with an independent SIP, using assumptions more in line with what we are asking for in terms of controls on industry and opportunities to get out of our cars. Its just a thought, Im not sure if this is the right forum, but thought Id throw it out here.
Posted on: Thu, 23 Jan 2014 04:41:35 +0000
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