Utahns consistently rank poor air quality as one of their biggest concerns, so you’d think that the Utah Division of Environmental Quality (DEQ) would be trying to comply with federal clean air regulations. Wrong.
In July the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rejected the State of Utah’s regional haze plan as ineffective. Instead of complying with the Federal Implementation Plan, DEQ has appealed the decision, insisting that the rejected Utah plan is somehow better than EPA’s plan.