Solutions to valley's winter air pollution challenge local task force

Related story: One asthmatic's struggle with PM 2.5

By Beth Huffaker

LOGAN -- Among frantic Christmas shoppers and horrible traffic on Main Street, stressed out holiday goers everywhere may try to relax by using the only spare minutes they can find to just take a deep breath of fresh air. This year it might be better just to hold your breath.

Yet another winter season has rolled into town and with it brought cold air and inversions that trap pollutants in Cache Valley. Pollutants known as PM 2.5, 1/40th the size of a human hair, are created when the ammonia in the valley from animal waste combines with the nitrate produced from vehicles, environmental health scientist with the Bear River Health Department Grant Koford said. On days when the warm air traps the pollutants in the valley, they can get into peoples' lungs causing swelling and bad health effects for anyone with asthma, lung or respiratory problems and people with heart problems.

"Some evidence infers it may even affect your immune system making someone more susceptible to get sick," Koford said.

Koford is part of the task force that has been meeting for the last 12 weeks studying the problem and finding solutions that they presented last week to both the Logan City Council and the Cache County Council. The plan they presented was the 4P plan, Protect, Publicize, Prevent and Predict.

The task force wants the miles traveled on red and yellow burn days (which are high pollution days) to be reduced by 50 percent, Koford said. They also recommended a public education program to make people aware of what they can do and what the effects of the pollutants are. Part of awareness would be having flags that alert cache valley residents of yellow or red days so that they can plan to carpool or not drive.

Among the recommendations were to have voluntary emission testing where people can get their cars tested and if they pass they get a green sticker that allows them to drive on red and yellow days. Without the sticker, vehicles could get tickets, Koford said.

"We can predict, using the meteorologist at USU, when an inversion is setting up over us a few days before so we all have time to change our behavior and make plans to reduce mileage on those days," Koford said.

This week the Cache County Council will vote on a resolution plan. Koford expects that the emission testing won't happen until next year and this winter the council will endorse the education campaign.

The federal Environmental Protection Agency regulates the PM 2.5 levels in cities on a three-year rolling average.

"If we exceed the average one more time then we will have violated the EPA standard," Koford said. "We're close this year and we wont have to get too high next year, then the EPA will mandate an emission program for everyone."

Joe Needham is a member of the Logan City Council and heard the task force recommendations and plan. "I liked it because it's not so strict," Needham said about the voluntary emission testing. "I think people are concerned. I had someone today even say, 'Joe, you guys got to make sure you do something about it.'

"Everyone talks like they are going to do something but I think people don't know what to do. The plan will encourage people to do something and to educate them," Needham said.

"The plan can also work with businesses," Needham said, who lets his employees come in late on red and yellow days so that they have time to carpool. Other business like McDonalds and some banks closed their drive-throughs last year to help reduce the amount of idling cars in the valley during red and yellow days.

For Utah State student Michelle Dittman, the poor air quality has her worried.

"My doctor said that my asthma has gotten worse," Dittman said. "I think it's the effect of the air pollution in Logan." Dittman, 20, has had mild asthma attacks all her life. But since she moved to Logan to attend school three years ago from California she has noticed a difference.

"I had a bad asthma attack a week and a half ago. I was just walking to class and then later I heard on the radio that the air quality was really bad that day."

Dittman spends at least eight months out of the year in the valley but goes home to California in the summer. On average she said that she gets an asthma attack about every two weeks regardless of whether she is in California or in Logan. What she has noticed is that the severities of her attacks are much worse in when she lives in Cache Valley. "I'm concerned about my own health, so I personally try to drive around a lot less."

Logan Mayor Doug Thompson has asthma too."I try to reduce my activities outdoors and stay inside," Thompson said about high pollution days.

Some studies have shown that warm air breaks down the particulates and they return to their gas form so inside can be a lot safer then being outdoors, Thompson said.

Right now the problem is only winter related because it is affected so much by the weather and inversions, Koford said. But with Cache Valley population on the rise, Koford said we may see new pollution problems arise in the summer.

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