EPA has downgraded the smog standard compliance status for Utah’s Uinta Basin, a step that could prod the state to impose new pollution curbs on the region’s booming oil and gas industry.
Under a final rule published Monday, the basin will be nudged lower from “marginal” to “moderate” nonattainment with EPA’s 2015 ground-level ozone standard under the five-point sliding scale the agency uses to rank failing areas.
While the progress of emission reductions is encouraging, monitoring data from recent years shows that ozone levels in some parts remain well above the 70-parts-per-billion threshold, EPA staffers wrote in the rule.
They also denied a request from the Ute Indian Tribe and Utah officials for a one-year extension to head off the downgrade. Under a draft form of the rule, EPA had previously proposed to allow the extension.
