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Grantsville leader aims to fight dust-busting battle
Written by Joshua Figueira
30 June 2007 - Summer is peak construction season, and the influx of backhoes, dump trucks and jack hammers is stirring up a bit of controversy in Grantsville.
"There's too much dust," said Gary Pinkham, a member of the Grantsville City planning and zoning commission. "It gets in the air, it gets on crops, it gets on clothes. It's everywhere."
Pinkham said he personally has gotten an increasing number of complaints about dust, so he decided to bring it before the planning commission.
"People care about this issue," Pinkham told the commission at a meeting last Thursday. "Wind is a fact of life in Tooele County, but dust doesn't have to be. It's a nuisance."
A nuisance that the state is supposed to be doing something about, said Pinkham.
"The state issues air quality permits to builders, and they have the responsibility to see that the conditions of those permits are adhered to," he said.
Rusty Ruby of the state Division of Air Quality said his office actively tries to monitor dust at construction sites, but the wording of the regulations guidelines is vague, and that creates a problem when it comes time to enforce them.
"Right now the requirement states that 'dust emissions must be minimized,'" Ruby said. "And that leaves a lot of room for debate. How do you define 'minimize?'"
Ruby said because of that ambiguity contractors and construction companies frequently make only token efforts to comply with state air quality requirements. Many builders, he said, ignore the requirements altogether because they know the standards are so hard to enforce.
"The official name for it is fugitive dust," Ruby said. "And that's exactly what it is. It's not like other pollutants that you can quantify and create emissions standards for. It's much harder to monitor, so companies don't try very hard to contain it."
Kathy Van Dame of the Wasatch Clean Air Coalition said that non-compliance by construction companies is not only irritating, it's cause for concern.
"There are bigger issues than comfort at play here," said Van Dame. "Fugitive dust has negative impacts on the health of plants, animals and humans."
Van Dame said one recent study showed that fugitive dust can cause silicosis, a lung disease commonly found in miners.
"Silicosis is more than just a bad cough," Van Dame said. "It will kill you. This is serious business."
Van Dame, who also serves on the state air quality board, said the state needs to be proactive in finding a solution to the fugitive dust issue. She said the legislature once undertook a study on the effects of dust emissions, but it never issued a final report. She doesn't know why a report was never given, but would like to see the project resurrected.
"I think people deserve to know just how much of a risk they're at," said Van Dame. "This is not just a nuisance. This is a serious problem that needs to be addressed."
joshua@tooeletranscript.com
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