The federal government says the Phoenix area’s air violates a clean-air standard because of unhealthy levels of dust, an expected step that gives Arizona until the end of the year to adopt a plan that could impose new mandates on builders, farmers and drivers.
“The clock is ticking,” says Steve Owens, director of the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says data from air quality monitoring from 2004 to 2006 found dust levels above the federal standard and that the state failed to meet a Dec. 31, 2006, deadline for compliance.
High levels of the particles pose a health threat because they affect the respiratory system and can damage lung tissue and cause premature death. The elderly, children and people with asthma and other respiratory conditions are particularly vulnerable, the agency says.
Primary causes of dust pollution in the Phoenix area are windblown dirt from construction sites, vacant lots, road building, farm fields, unpaved parking lots and roads, both paved and unpaved, the agency says.
If the agency confirms its finding after a 30-day public comment period, the Clean Air Act requires that the agency designate the Phoenix area as a “nonattainment area.” That would require the state to submit a plan to reduce particulates by five percent a year until the air complies with the federal standard.
“We are working closely with the state and local agencies to take the necessary steps to being clean air” to the Phoenix area, says Deborah Jordan, EPA’s air division director for the EPA division that includes Arizona.
The EPA issued its announcement shortly before the state Senate approved, 25-1, and sent to the House a bill to combat air pollution in the Phoenix and Tucson areas.
However, the bill previously was shorn of numerous provisions and its current version is regarded as a “placeholder” while lawmakers, clean-air advocates and industry lobbyists try to work out a compromise.
Current provisions of the bill (S1552) include restrictions on outdoor fires, leaf blowers and truck hauling of uncovered loads. Deleted provisions included restrictions on farm tilling and expansion of the Phoenix and Tucson emission-control areas that require smog checks on cars and light trucks.
The bill’s sponsor said she would show the EPA announcement to her legislative colleagues as she works to strengthen the bill.
“I want them to see it in black and white and know this is real and know this is not something … made up just to make people’s lives miserable,” says Sen. Carolyn Allen, R-8.
If the state doesn’t come up with a satisfactory plan, the federal government could impose sanctions. Those could include a reduction, slowdown or even cutoff of federal highway dollars and, separately, restrictions on new business projects that would produce emissions.
Both approaches are regarded as threats to the rapidly growing region’s economic development, but Owens says the “neutered” condition of Allen’s bill is a reflection of an unwillingness by many to sacrifice.
“We’re not convinced that any of the parties who are responsible for pollution in the Valley take this seriously enough yet and it may be it will take the EPA to take action to convince them that this is a very (serious) problem,” Owens says.
Phoenix was initially designated a non-attainment area for particulates in 1996 and given a December 2001 deadline to come into appliance. However, the EPA granted the state’s request for a five-year extension and set the Dec. 31, 2006, deadline that the federal agency has now concluded the state failed to meet.