State officials are claiming victory in a 25-year struggle over air pollution — but they warn Utah is close to violating two new health standards and must work hard to control those pollutants.

Rick Sprott, director of the Utah Division of Air Quality, said Monday that the state is submitting documentation to the Environmental Protection Agency to show that three former non-attainment areas — places that were cited for violating PM10 air pollution rules — are now in compliance. They are Salt Lake and Utah counties and the Ogden region.

The areas can continue to meet PM10 standards at least through 2017, says the state's submission.

The EPA had cited the three in 1990, saying they failed to meet standards of the Clean Air Act for pollutants of PM10 (dust and soot particles about 10 percent as small as the width of a human hair), sulfur dioxide, ozone and carbon monoxide. Since then, strides have been made in cleaning up the pollution, say state officials.

Earlier this year, Utah submitted to the EPA information that the second-to-last pollutant remaining on the list, sulfur dioxide, was now under control. "We haven't had a violation of sulfur dioxide since 1983," Sprott told the Deseret Morning News.

Now Utah may be on track to have the final pollutant, PM10, declared under control. But Sprott said the EPA is allowed to take up to 18 months to verify attainment and sometimes takes longer on complex issues.

"While this is certainly an important milestone, we have new standards for ozone and PM2.5," he said. The last is the for particles only a quarter as large as PM10. "We're currently attaining those standards, but we're very close" to violating them.

"The work is not done," Sprott said.

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The counties and city worked hard to reduce particulate pollution, he added. "A big part of it was wood smoke, and the public just really latched onto the wood burn program."

Evidently, the public paid close attention to state notices published in this newspaper and elsewhere on green, yellow or red days for wood-burning stoves and fireplaces.

"We get almost total compliance with that," said Sprott, "and that's just made a terrific difference."


E-mail: bau@desnews.com

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