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Water, Water, Everywhere: Is Your Drinking Water Safe after a Flood?
Over the past month, snowpack runoff, wet weather, and warm conditions have led to major flooding in northern Utah. When the Bear River crested in mid-February 2017, Garland City, Tremonton, Bothwell, Thatcher, East Garland Park, Riverside, Fielding, Plymouth, Corinne, Deweyville, Portage, and areas below the Cutler dam were hit with area-wide flooding. Roads and railroad…
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Employer-Based Trip Reduction Programs Improve Air Quality
By Mat Carlile Last week’s inversion wasn’t the kind of “present” any of us wanted for the holidays. We know that fine particulates caused by the buildup of pollutants under the inversion’s “lid” create poor air quality and poses a health risk, particularly to the young, elderly, and those with respiratory and heart disease. We…
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Mercury in Fish: When Catch and Release Is Good for You, Too
By Amy Dickey Editor’s Note: The recent release of metals-laden sediment from Tibble Fork Reservoir has raised concerns among anglers about heavy-metals contamination in fish in the American Fork River. The Division of Wildlife Resources (DWR) is currently collecting live fish downstream from the reservoir and will be testing them for the presence of metals…
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Wildfires: Where There’s Smoke, There’s Pollution
Originally published July 5, 2016 By Donna Kemp Spangler Wildfire season is in full swing, most notably in central and southern Utah, where firefighters continue to battle several stubborn wildfires. Although individuals along the Wasatch Front may not be directly impacted by the wildfires burning south of here, the smoke from fires can have a…
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Willard Spur: Resolving Conflict through Collaboration
By Jeff Ostermiller Sometimes it’s hard for me to keep my inner cynic in check. This is particularly true during presidential elections, when the divisive nature of our political system makes compromise among differing viewpoints seem impossible. In contrast to presidential politics, our collaboration on Willard Spur embraced divergent views to help find solutions to…
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Radon Test High? Rid your Home of Radon
By Eleanor Divver You’ve probably heard that one in three homes in Utah has elevated levels of radon, and that radon is the leading cause of lung cancer in nonsmokers. And since you care about your family’s health and safety, you’ve tested your home — and your results came in above the EPA action level…
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Talking Trash at DEQ
Interview with Matt Sullivan Most of us take our trash to the curb for pickup and don’t really consider where it goes after that. But did you know that the landfill that accepts your trash has to meet and maintain rigorous environmental standards to protect soils, ground water, and air? We asked Matt Sullivan, an…
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Water Quality: Helping Communities Protect Their Water Quality
By Lisa Nelson, P.E. On September 23, 2015, on a beautiful sunny day in the mountains of Summit County, members of Utah’s Water Quality Board, along with Trever Johnson and Duane Schmidt, current and former mayors of Coalville City, gathered together with the Coalville City Council for a ribbon-cutting ceremony to celebrate the completion of…
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Radon: Silent Killer Lurks in One Out of Three Utah Homes
By Jan Poulsen, Guest Blogger DEQ invites guest bloggers to share their thoughts on issues that impact our environment. We appreciate their insights and the opportunity to broaden the conversation with others in the community. My name is Jan Poulsen, and I am a lung cancer survivor. I want to share my story in the…
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Drinking Water: Boiling Water Woes
By Kim Dyches Following the recent news coverage about communities boiling their water, water customers may want to know if this contamination could have easily been prevented. The answer is YES. These contamination events were the result of a cross-connection between someone’s pressurized irrigation system and the culinary water line into their home. Contaminated water…
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Water Quality: Keeping Pollutants from Going down the (Storm) Drain
By Harry Campbell You may have noticed a lot of water rushing into storm drains during the heavy rains this past month. This storm water runoff comes from homes, city streets, parking lots, industrial facilities, and construction sites and often contains sediment, fertilizer, pesticides, oil, gasoline, pet waste, or hazardous waste. And because storm water…
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Radiation Control: Proposal to Dispose Depleted Uranium in Utah Receives Extensive Analysis
By Helge Gabert Although depleted uranium (DU) once constituted a small percentage of the low-level radioactive waste (LLRW) generated in the United States, increased production in recent years has led to a growing need to find sites that are best suited for its long-term disposal. EnergySolutions, a commercial LLRW company in Utah, is seeking a…
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Hazardous Waste: DEQ Protects the Public through Inspections, Education
By Alex Pashley Almost everything we do creates some kind of waste. While many wastes are relatively benign, some are hazardous and need to be regulated to protect public health and the environment. As a hazardous waste inspector for the Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Solid and Hazardous Waste (DSHW), I evaluate the hazardous…
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Hazardous Waste: Cleaning Up a Legacy of Chemical Waste
By Dave Larsen Can you think of a nice name for huge piles of waste from the demilitarization and testing of chemical agent bombs, projectiles, and other munitions? The U.S. Army likes to call this “legacy waste,” and it includes thousands of munitions that were disposed of on the ground or buried at Army facilities…
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Tier 3 Standards Will Help Clean Utah Air
By Glade Sowards There’s been a lot of buzz in Utah lately about Tier 3—shorthand for the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) Tier 3 Vehicle Emission and Fuel Standards Program. When a geeky name like Tier 3 becomes a household word that’s used not only by us policy wonks but by Governor Herbert, mayors, legislators, radio…
