Clean Air, Clean Air, Clean Air

Here's a recap of where Rocky Mountain Clean Air Action has left its mark for clean air in the region:

In response to a petition filed by Rocky Mountain Clean Air Action, the CEMEX cement plant in Lyons is facing scrutiny by the Environmental Protection Agency. The petition calls on the Environmental Protection Agency to require CEMEX to install the best pollution controls on its smokestack. CEMEX claims its spent "millions" to clean up the Lyons cement plant, yet the company hasn't spent a penny on upgrading controls on its smokestack.

Rocky Mountain Clean Air Action has taken aim at climate change. Together with a number of local, regional, and national health and environmental groups, we've challenged the Bureau of Land Management's decision to auction hundreds of thousands of acres of Colorado, Montana, and New Mexico for more oil and gas drilling, drilling that will fuel global warming pollution.

And earlier this week, Rocky Mountain Clean Air Action challenged a decision by the Forest Service to allow a western Colorado coal mine to vent billions of cubic feet of methane--again  Methane is not only a valuable gas, it's 21 times more potent than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas. We successfully overturned the same decision last February.

And you heard it from the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment first: people are the best air quality monitors.

Smoggy Skies on the Rise

Ground-level ozone, the key ingredient of smog, has long been known to plague urban communities throughout the country. But new findings are revealing that ozone is fast becoming a major health threat in rural communities throughout the Rocky Mountain region.

Ozone is a well-known threat to human health. While up high ozone protects us from ultraviolet radiation, down low it corrodes lungs, triggers asthma attacks, and can even cause premature death.

The latest health science though, is showing that even at low levels, ozone is hazardous to our health. In fact, the EPA just adopted stronger limits on ozone nationwide (although the new limits were roundly criticized for not going far enough to safeguard public health).

Here in the Rocky Mountain region, we're finding that ozone is rising to the very levels that are now known to threaten our health, even in rural areas. Here's a few examples of what's going on:

• Colorado: high ozone levels have recently been recorded in Garfield County, the epicenter of western Colorado's natural gas drilling boom;
  
• New Mexico: state officials have conceded that San Juan County in northwestern New Mexico, the site of booming oil and gas drilling, will violate the EPA's new ozone standards;
  
• Wyoming: state officials have issued several unprecedented health warnings because of high ozone in western Wyoming, again the site of tremendous gas drilling impacts;

The take home message here is that ozone is no longer just an urban pollution problem in the Rocky Mountain region.

So what's to be done? If it's not already clear, there's a connection between unprecedented levels of oil and gas drilling and unprecedented levels of ozone. As we've pointed out before, the oil and gas industry is a burgeoning source of ozone forming pollution. Vapors from tanks and gas wells, as well as emissions from drill rig engines and trucks, are all on the rise. If we're going to clean up our Rocky Mountain skies, then we need to clean up the oil and gas industry.

Like we always say, although smoggy skies may be on the rise, we know what needs to be done to reverse this trend. Rocky Mountain Clean Air Action is going to start calling on states throughout the region to start cleaning up air pollution from the oil and gas industry and keeping communities safe and healthy.

Gas Drilling in the Jonah Field of Western Wyoming is Fouling the Air (image from Biodiversity Conservation Alliance, courtesy of EcoFlight).