Working To Clean Our Air

 A clean environment is vital to our quality of life and to the health of everyone in our state, and it is one of my main focuses as your State Representative. Because of our hard work as a state, we have been able to significantly reduce each person’s emissions over the past few years. Air pollution in Utah has dropped in half in the last 20 years, even though the population has increased by more than 1 million people during that time. These are great accomplishments, but we all still have more work to do.

According to the Utah Division of Air Quality, 29 percent of our air pollution comes from our homes and businesses, 17 percent comes from industrial sources, and 42 percent of the pollution comes from our cars and trucks.

To continue cleaning up our air it will take all of us working together. Some actions we can take include:

• Carpool to work or school

• Telecommute as often as possible

• Don’t burn wood on red burn days

• Convert to gas fireplaces

• When buying a new car, make it electric or low emission

• Change out water heaters to new low emission models

As part of my environmental commitment, I have worked in the State Legislature to clean up Utah’s air.

• I was one of the original members of the Legislative Clean Air Caucus, a bipartisan group of legislators committed to environmental protection

• I have either sponsored or cosponsored nearly all air quality bills to pass the legislature during my tenure

• This year I sponsored a bill to expand Utah’s electric vehicle charging network, providing much needed resources to rural parts of our state and enabling zero emission cars to move freely throughout our state

Improving our air quality is essential to our health and quality of life and I will continue to focus on providing workable solutions for all Utahns.

If you’d like more information on steps you can take to improve Utah’s air quality, visit YourAirYourUtah.org.

Sidenote: this is the meeting of the Clean Air Caucus