On Dec. 4, 2024, 2.5 million Utah residents were smothered by a classic winter inversion, leading to the worst air quality in the country and 16th worst in the world. Utahns die from inversions, as they do almost every day from air pollution. The deceased don’t lie in a morgue with toe tags that say “air pollution did this,” just as toe tags never say “smoking did this.” But because both of them increase the risk of the things that do this — heart attacks, strokes, fatal arrhythmias, heart failure, cancer, Alzheimer’s, pneumonia, COVID, respiratory failure, miscarriages, still births, SIDS and more — pollution should be included in these death certificates.
A BYU study estimated up to 8,000 Utahns die prematurely every year because of our poor air quality. Globally, air pollution is the second leading risk factor for death, ahead of tobacco and poor diet, including for children under five.
The economics of air pollution are as ugly as our inversions. The “worst air pollution in the country” is hardly keeping health care costs down, keeping kids in school, luring companies or employees to move here or boosting real estate values. National estimates of the economic burden of Utah’s air pollution are up to $9 billion a year. The BYU study estimated air pollution costs Utahns on average two years of life expectancy. A Forbes magazine article suggests people would pay about $200,000 to live two years longer. By that metric alone, our air pollution is costing each of us about $200,000. Not something you can put on a credit card.
Now let’s look at what the Utah Inland Port Authority (UIPA) has planned and how that might affect your future. UIPA makes the astonishing claim they will make our air quality better by greater utilization of airplanes and trains. Let’s see if that’s plausible.
One 1,700 acre development in Tooele headed by Josh Romney with the help of UIPA is estimated to generate 50,726 daily vehicle trips at full build out. Extrapolating from that study, the 30,584 acres of UIPA’s taxpayer-subsidized project areas in the Great Salt Lake (GSL) Basin would add 913,000 daily vehicle trips to Wasatch Front roadways, many of them diesel trucks. That’s almost the number of cars currently registered in Utah. Does anyone seriously believe we can double traffic on Wasatch Front roads and not make our air pollution significantly worse? More goods shipped mean more fossil fuel emissions, whether from diesel trucks, trains or airplanes. Inland ports elsewhere aren’t nicknamed “diesel death zones” for no reason.
UIPA wants taxpayers to subsidize making Salt Lake City “a top gateway for air cargo in the USA.” Airplane exhaust is often ignored in discussions on air pollution. For anyone who breathes, that is a huge mistake. Air traffic at LAX airport emits half as much pollution as all the cars on their freeways, and it increases the worst type of pollution, ultrafine particulate matter, by 400% as far away as ten miles. UIPA cheerleads that trains will clean up our air. According to Emissions Based Maintenance (EBM), emissions experts in Lehi, two tier 0+ diesel locomotive engines will produce the equivalent in direct PM2.5 of what is emitted from 500,000 cars.
UIPA is planning industrial development on top of or nearby 77,000 acres of critical GSL wetlands. Paving over or harming wetlands will increase our air pollution in four other ways. Wetlands are effective air pollution sponges, so much so that the presence or absence of wetlands can be used to predict levels of particulate pollution in an area. On the other hand, laying hot asphalt releases toxic VOCs. But even years later, when exposed to sunlight and summer temperatures, asphalt continues to emit VOCs and “secondary organic aerosols,” (SOC) which are major components of PM2.5. This phenomenon is equal to, or even exceeds the contribution of tailpipe emissions to summertime PM2.5 in Los Angeles.
Water availability and air pollution are the most obvious limits to economic growth in Utah. Let’s ask UIPA, “Where will the water come from for over 30,000 acres of subsidized industrial development?” In Tooele, home to two of several UIPA project sites near GSL, wells are already running dry. UIPA’s projects will take water from the lake. A smaller GSL means less local precipitation (losing the lake effect) and a vicious feedback loop, shrinking the lake further and expanding the dry lakebed. That means more dust storms, more methane, more ozone and less absorption of particulate pollution.
In 2018 Derek Miller, UIPA’s first board chairman, proudly proclaimed they were “building the plane (UIPA) while flying it.” Now they’re building the plane while crash landing it on Utah’s own residents. A Utah future dictated by UIPA will be breathtaking, and not in a good way. Time for us all to demand UIPA be retired.