ST. GEORGE – On Friday, Sept.21, the Southern Utah Air Quality Task Force is hosting the 3rd Annual Air Quality Summit at the Washington City Community Center. With the public encouraged to attend, this year’s summit will focus on transportation issues affecting local citizens, industry, business, government and tourism.
Southern Utah is known for its blue skies and clean air and so the City of St. George along with the Air Quality Task Force, are being proactive in order to maintain our air quality. The Air Quality Task Force was formed in 2006 and just one year later an Air Quality Ordinance was passed. Currently the task force has been working on getting another air quality monitor to measure the air coming into the area.
We want to also understand what we are contributing to the air quality before it leaves Washington County. With over 50 percent of our air pollution coming from motor vehicles, transportation is a relevant topic for the summit to address. We’ve gathered a handful of people from all different sectors of the transportation industry in order to highlight the positive things that people are doing to reduce their contribution to air pollution, as well as the things that we could be doing in the future to improve these concerns.
This year’s keynote speakers will be Erin Mendenhall with Breath Utah and Kim Manwill with the Utah Department of Transportation. The summit will also have presentations by experts in the following fields:
- Performance and Emission Reductions by Utah Trucking Association
- Success stories using alternative fuels and solutions to transportation challenges
- Question & Answer panel moderated by Kate Dalley from Fox News 93.1 FM.
Panel members include:
Jimmy Andrus – Utah Trucking Association
Derrick Pack – Western Rock Products
Mike Shaw – Washington City Fleet Management
Steven Packham – DAQ Toxicologist
Dave McNeil – Division of Air Quality
Curt Hutchings – 5 County Association of Governments
Launi Schmutz – Washington County School District Transportation
Larry Bulloch – St. George Public Works.
RSVP with questions for panel to [email protected]
As part of the Summit Mayor Dan McArthur will read a proclamation designating Sept. 16-22 as Air Quality Awareness Week.
Event Recap:
What: 3rd Annual Air Quality Summit
Where: Washington City Community Center, 350 North Community Center Dr., Washington
When: Friday, Sept. 21, 8:30 a.m. to – 12 p.m.
Surely hasn’t been clear blue skies lately. Hazy conditions region-wide seem to be the norm this summer with fires and ozone from more traffic, so it’s nice to see the area being proactive tackling air quality before it’s too late.
Now if we could just tackle an issue that never seems to get enough focus and attention…water waste and conservation!
Shouldn’t there be an annual Water Conservation Summit in our area? I’m so sick of seeing sprinklers come on multiple times a day EVEN in mid-late September, flooding gutters and sidewalks from businesses to apartment complexes and parks all over the city. Why is St. George so lax on this issue?! And you want a billion dollar pipeline from Lake Powell, why? for more of this nonsense waste?
For what it’s worth, Miss Jackson, our reporter looked into part of this question back in June:
http://www.stgeorgeutah.com/news/archive/2012/06/04/residents-complain-of-municipal-water-waste-city-responds/
Why thankyou for posting, Joyce.
It’s my pleasure, Miss Jackson.
What is this so-called “air quality ordinance” we now have? Does it involve putting a halt to these local diesel truck polluters or cars with bad exhaust getting tickets like in Vegas or SLC? I didn’t know we had such an ordinance.
Baseline air quality is permanently atrocious as a consequence of the planet’s laughably primitive industry and transportation apparatus as well as the sheer magnitude of aggregated polluting factors, such as fires near uranium deposits, lingering radioactive fallout, jet engine and vehicle exhaust, crap floating around in space, cow farts, Palestinians burning flags, stuff degrading, dust storms, sewer vapors, my toxic burps, you name it. The best short term solution is to construct a bio-dome over the entire area complete with the latest civil engineering technologies and filled to the brim with plants to boost oxygen levels, which tend to fluctuate while remaining disturbingly low.
And lest we forget all the hot air expelled by me in my nonsensical rants. The content of my messages are trivial in impact but the toxicity to which I deliver them is catastrophic. In fact, when words come out of my mouth, I usually light a match as a courtesy to bystanders.
Murat No. 2
This is one topic City hall is on top of. Let’s make a difference and expand Suntran so more people can ride the bus and less have to drive a car. Just a brilliant idea…
St. George is an excellent city for biking as a alternative transportation. I hope to see more effort applied to get biking more attractive as the alternative source for transportation.