Clean air can be taken for granted, but with proposals for higher air quality standards, multiple areas in Wyoming will have to be reevaluated.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) suggested updates to the National Ambient Air Quality Standards for ground-level ozone pollution, or smog, this past week, moving the current standard from 75 parts per billion (ppb) to between 60 and 70 ppb.
Dangerous ozone levels are not new to the state Elaine Crumpley, who sits on the board of directors of Citizens United for Responsible Energy Development (CURED), said.
CURED is a task force in Pinedale that has actively worked to reduce ozone levels, where high-risk ozone levels have continually been an issue, Crumpley said.
Three counties in Wyoming are currently out of compliance with national ozone standards, Temple Stoellinger, co-director of the Center for Law and Energy Resources in the Rockies and assistant professor of environmental law at UW, said. If the new EPA standards are implemented, eight areas in the state will be out of compliance.
Confusion often arises between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ ozone. The stratospheric ozone, or the ‘good ozone,’ helps to keep UV rays from damaging Earth, whereas ground-level ozone is ‘bad ozone,’ Crumpley said.
“It takes a combination of things to make it happen,” she said. “Emissions and chemicals that come out in the air as nitrogen oxide and volatile organic compounds hook together in with the regular atmosphere to create harmful oxygen.”
Unique to Wyoming, ozone levels are worse in the winter, due to the reflection of the sunlight on the snow, Crumpley said, adding in big cities levels are worse during the heat of the summer. Surprisingly, Pinedale, a population of 1,977 people, recorded ozone at 124ppb in 2011, whereas, the highest level recorded in Los Angeles that year was 114ppb, where the population is 3.884 million.
“Los Angeles has tremendous amounts of cars and exhaust which contribute to ozone and smog,” Crumpley said. “We are the least populated state and least populated county in the lower U.S. and we exceeded Los Angeles’s spikes of high levels of ozone.”
The phenomenon of cold weather ozone is still not fully understood and is being thoroughly researched here at UW, Stoellinger said.
One of the main causes of ground-level ozone is oil and gas production, one of Wyoming’s top industries, Crumpley said. The oil companies near Pinedale have collaborated with CURED to combat the high-risk ozone, and compiled recommendations to monitor and reduce emissions from gas wells that are beginning to be implemented
Fewer wells are operating near Pinedale compared to the boom seven years ago, which has contributed to a decrease in high-risk ozone levels, Crumpley said.
It is crucial high ozone levels are reduced because people exposed to numbers above 75 ppb for eight hours will experience irreversible health damage, Crumpley said. The state also conducted a study on the Pinedale Clinic that found for every 10ppb increase of ozone levels there was an increase in people coming into the clinic with respiratory complications, she said.
“In Wyoming, we are an outdoor culture. It is very hard to say with high ozone days to stay inside,” she said. “Resource people, ranchers, gas field workers, they are human too and they are also being exposed horribly.”
In order to meet the EPA’s proposed ozone regulations, Stoellinger said the Department of Environmental Quality would likely follow similar steps to reduce ozone levels in other communities.
The basis of the oil and gas industry may need to require a shift in policies, Crumpley said.
“I think they need to include clean air and water as part of our economic value. These need to be factored in with the bottom line of what profit is,” she said.
This could be a pricey feat though, as the EPA estimates meeting the new standards could cost between $4 and $15 billion every year. Crumpley noted it is not impossible, and the technology to implement changes exists.
Thomas Shaffer, a UW engineering sophomore who formerly lived in Pinedale, said he spent a lot of time learning about the ozone levels in high school. He attended a conference in Denver that detailed issues and risks associated with ground-level ozone.
Although Shaffer said he was aware of high-risk ozone levels, he said it was never a huge fear for him.
“They would shut down drilling operations on high risk days, but that didn’t do much because the emissions were already in the air,” he said. “It never really influenced what I did at all or really affected me.”
The EPA is seeking public comment on the new regulations, and a final standard should be set by June 2015.
