The Salt Lake Tribune has some great photos and a mulit-media presentation about the two Clean Air rallys over the past two weeks.
Click here for the multimedia presentation regarding the February 25th Clean Air Rally (be sure your sound is turned up to hear the interviews and children’s chants).
Click here for a photo slideshow of the Kids for Clean Air lobbying day.
March 2, 2009
MEDIA ADVISORY
CONTACTS:
Travis Harvey, Board Member of Utah Moms for Clean Air (801-435-9434 or 815-4925)
Cherise Udell: Founder of Utah Moms for Clean Air (801/582-9369 or 510-306-6963)
WHO: A coalition of kids who care about Utah’s air quality
WHEN: March 3
9am: Students from the Open Classroom will be walking to the Capitol
9:15: Students from Morningside Elementary will arrive on a bio-diesel school bus
9:30: Students will be introduced to the House of Representatives in the Gallery
10:30: Kids for Clean Air Press Conference
WHERE: The State Capitol Rotunda
WHAT: Over 100 students from Rowland Hall, Morningside Elementary and Whittier Elementary will gather with colorful posters in order to greet our elected officials and encourage them to support clean air legislation. Additionally, they will hold a press conference, featuring four students ranging in age from 5 yrs old to 12 yrs old. The children have all composed their own speeches (including the five year old!).
Utah Moms for Clean Air, who is hosting today’s event, will invite kids before the press conference to help hand-out information to legislators.
WHY: These kids are in disbelief that certain days of the year they cannot go outside to play because the air is so dirty. They think it is time for the grown-ups to start cleaning up their own messes!
RALLY FOR CLEAN AIR!!!
Wednesday, February 25th at the Utah Capitol (Interior West Steps Near the Rotunda).
LOBBYING: 11:00 - 12:00
RALLY: 12:00 to 1:00
Let’s pack the Capitol with a chorus of voices calling for clean air! We cannot wait any longer to clean up our polluted air and the legislature must recognize the important role they can and must play in this fight. Bring yourself, your children, your friends, and your grandparents — everyone! — to tell our legislators that enough is enough. Utah Moms for Clean Air doesn’t just represent moms — we are for everyone who cares about our poor air quality and the health danger it poses, especially to children. So please join us no matter who you are!
We will be meeting to directly lobby our legislators from 11:00 to 12:00 near the west steps of the Capitol building. Lobbying is easier than you think; if you haven’t done it before we will walk you through the process, and brief you with talking points.
The rally will start at 12:00 noon in the Capitol Building, West Staircase near the Rotunda. Bring a sign to hold up if you can (the press will be there as well as a documentary film-maker making a film about our air problem in Utah); keep the signs respectful, as our power derives from our image as a “family friendly” group. We will ask the legislature what actions they can take to fix this problem, and demand that they not sit and wait for the problem to get worse. We also want them to vote “Yes” on House Bill 393 which will prevent the construction of new power plants that can’t meet air quality standards.
Kids are invited on February 25, and we are also sponsoring a Kids for Clean Air day at the legislature from 9:00 am to 12:00 pm on Tuesday, March 3. If you know a group of kids who would like to come, contact travis@utahmomsforcleanair.org to find out how they can participate. It will be a terrific opportunity for kids to make their voices heard on an issue that directly affects them, and an equally important opportunity for them to see the legislative process in action!
Contact us at supermoms@utahmomsforcleanair.org with any questions and we’ll see you there!
Please tell anyone you know who cares about clean air and children’s health about this rally. The legislature need to see how important this issue is to all Utahns!!
From the Salt Lake Tribune, February 11, 2009
“Proposed bill would ban new power plants in polluted areas — Power facilities would not be built in areas with the dirtiest air
By Judy Fahys
A Centerville lawmaker stepped up Wednesday with a bill to clear the way for cleaner air in northern Utah valleys.
Rep. Roger Barrus formally introduced legislation to put a two-year moratorium on most power plants in areas that do not meet federal clean-air standards for fine soot. If passed, HB393 would block a proposed power plant that has applied for a state license to burn waste petroleum as fuel adjacent to the Holly Refinery in West Bountiful.
“I believe everyone wants to find ways to improve our air quality,” said the Centerville Republican, whose district includes the “petcoke” plant.
Cecilee Price-Huish, a Davis County resident leading the fight against the plant, called the bill “a big first step in the right direction.”
“People will definitely rally behind this bill,” she said of the hundreds of neighbors and other critics who have been fighting the plant. But she said the next step should be to stop petcoke plants, notorious for pumping out dirty emissions laced with hazardous pollutants, for good.
Consolidated Energy Systems, which did not return a phone message for comment Wednesday, has been working toward an air-pollution permit for its 109-megawatt plant since the summer of 2007. The Utah Division of Air Quality was poised to grant the permit when area residents and local health-advocacy groups began voicing strong objections in recent months.
One reason: The state already is struggling to bring northern Utah valleys into compliance with stricter standards for fine-particle pollution also known as PM 2.5. With a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency mandate to clean up the air in a few years, many of the petcoke plant critics criticized state regulators for considering signing off on a plant that would add still more pollution.
DAQ Director Cheryl Heying said Barrus’ legislation gives her agency two years to develop a kind of pollution checklist to add to its regulatory toolkit for meeting the federal standards.
“DAQ had no ability to do that,” said Barrus, “so I created that ability” through the bill.
The moratorium would not apply to low-emissions natural gas power plants.
Barrus also noted that lawmakers are moving on other fronts to tackle pollution from cars and trucks.”
Reported in the New York Times today, “President Obama will direct federal regulators on Monday to move swiftly on an application by California and 13 other states to set strict automobile emission and fuel efficiency standards, two administration officials said Sunday.” Together those 13 states represent half of the cars sold in the US.
Once these stricter emissions standards are in place, “automobile manufacturers will quickly have to retool to begin producing and selling cars and trucks that get higher mileage than the national standard, and on a faster phase-in schedule.”
Utah is not one of the 13 states, but this change will make such a possibility much more conceivable. But it will take convincing our own legislature of the importance of the change.
Read the full story here at the NY TIMES.
The Deseret News, and local TV news channels, covered a Utah Moms for Clean Air press event at the City Academy during this latest nasty inversion.
Here is the link to the KSL segment.
The Deseret News piece follows.
Group tries to draw attention to air quality issues
By David Servatius
Deseret News
Published: January 23, 2009 available online here.
Against the backdrop of a valley enveloped in some of the most polluted air in the country, a group of concerned citizens gathered Friday at the state Capitol to deliver a survey to lawmakers and draw attention to air-quality issues.
The group included representatives from Utah Moms for Clean Air and their children; students and teachers from local charter school City Academy; and members of the Unitarian Church of Salt Lake City.
Debbie Sigman, a member of Utah Moms for Clean Air, said the survey is intended to identify legislators who would be willing to work with the group and to determine which ideas would have a realistic chance of being enacted into law.
“We’re not ready this year to create legislation,” Sigman said. “These ideas are good ideas, but they’re seeds. They’re only intended to start a conversation.”
Utah Moms for Clean Air founder Cherise Udell said the survey included questions about support for public transportation projects and about expanding a $2.5 million school bus retrofit program, funded by the Legislature last year, to include all diesel vehicles.
“Cleaning up diesel is one of the biggest bangs for your buck,” Udell said.
City Academy chemistry teacher and bus driver Shea Wickelson said retrofitting the school’s bus with advanced emissions controls had resulted in a 90 percent reduction in pollutants being released into the air.
“The air around school buses is 15 percent higher in dangerous particulates than EPA limits,” Wickelson said. “Kids’ lungs are still developing, and so they are even more susceptible to problems.”
To put this data into perspective, the federal standard for PM 2.5 averaged over a 24-hour period is 35 micrograms/cubic meter; yesterday’s spike was nearly 3 times that 24-hour standard. The air is so bad right now that Ogden, Salt Lake, and Provo have by far the worst air quality in the nation as reported by the EPA’s website.
To protect your families, we urge you to limit yourselves to only the most vitally necessary car trips, avoid idling for longer than 10 seconds, get in the habit of carpooling, talk to your employer about telecommuting, and otherwise limit your fuel consumption as much as possible. In addition, avoid strenuous exercise and have the kids play inside while the air is bad. Avoid all sources of indoor pollution like candles, incense, cigarette smoke, etc., and buy a HEPA air filter.
While you’re spending more time indoors and less time exercising and driving, let your elected officials know how you feel about this air inversion. The legislative session is coming up next month and we want to be sure air quality is a top priority.
Also, plan to join us Tuesday, January 27 at 6:30 pm at the Anderson-Foothill Library (1135 South 2100 East, Salt Lake City) for a public meeting. Let’s get organized, energized, and prepared to make Utah a better place to breathe!
