The Basin’s own air quality expert gave his annual report on Uintah Basin air quality at the state legislature this month. Dr. Seth Lyman of the USU Bingham Research Center provided detail and context to the fact that ozone concentrations have exceeded the EPA standard of 70-parts-per-billion on some days during winters in the Uintah Basin. In his report, Dr. Lyman demonstrated how the days of ozone exceedance closely tie to meteorology, dependent on snow cover and high barometric pressure. He also explained that while locally-emitted pollution due to the oil and gas industry gets trapped during winter inversions, the oil and gas industry does not emit ozone-forming pollutants more heavily than the average of other oil and gas producing basins in the United States. Rather, Dr. Lyman explained that the Basin’s unique wintertime inversions lead average levels of pollution to increase to high levels of ozone. Portions of the Basin could be declared in non-attainment by the EPA ozone standard but the timeline for that is uncertain. Exceedances of particulate matter, however, are infrequent and the region is not in danger of non-attainment in that area. In 2016, the Utah Legislature tasked the Bingham Research Center with conducting the research to better understand winter ozone in the Uintah Basin. Dr. Lyman’s report this month was providing an update on that research.
