By Brian Moench, Founder and President of the Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment
Deseret News, Dec 17th, 2008
Clean-air advocates have different nightmares than most people. Mine usually involve snorkeling in a pool of sulfur dioxide while breathing from a diesel engine tailpipe and listening to Sean Hannity on my coal-powered iPod.
But my new worst nightmare came from a public notice issued by the Utah Division of Air Quality (DAQ). In breathtaking defiance of medical science, climate science and the central role clean energy must play in any economic revival, the DAQ has approved the construction of one of the nation’s dirtiest fossil-fuel-burning power plants right in the heart of Salt Lake and Davis counties surrounded by thousands of homes, tens of thousands of children and contaminating the airshed of the entire Wasatch Front.
An out-of-state company, Consolidated Energy, has received the green light to construct a 109-megawatt power plant in North Salt Lake on property owned by the Holly oil refinery. The plant would burn primarily petroleum coke and residual fuel oil, the dirtiest and cheapest fossil fuels available. Overall, the emissions from such plants are many times worse than from coal power plants, equivalent to an incinerator that burns used tires.
As most Utah residents know, the air quality along the Wasatch Front is already a public health hazard. But the extent of the hazard is still under-appreciated. Thousands of published studies in the world’s most prestigious medical journals and the official positions of the world’s premier medical institutions reveal the following:
As many as 2,000 Utah residents die prematurely every year because of our air pollution. Most of these deaths are due to heart attacks, strokes, episodes of heart and lung failure and lung cancer. Even children suffer significant health effects because of our air quality: increased rates of premature birth, low birth weight, SIDS, overall infant mortality and death from respiratory disease. This proposed plant would give off uniquely toxic emissions that are likely to cause higher rates of cancer in children and adults.
Levels of air pollution already common in Utah are associated with children showing aggravation of asthma, permanent loss of lung function and diminished intelligence. Genetic damage has been proven to be the end result of air pollution leading to a broad array of diseases that manifest decades after exposure and even in subsequent generations. Virtually every health consequence caused by smoking is also caused by air pollution.
The DAQ justified approving the plant with this rationale: The contribution to our poor air quality from this facility alone would be small, therefore it is safe. The same could be said about every pack of cigarettes smoked. The damage from each pack is small, therefore it is safe. If you see your 14-year-old smoking, relax, that one pack won’t kill him.
