Essay by Dennis Hinkamp
Environment – April 2004 – Colorado Central Magazine
LOGAN, IN NORTHERN UTAH, doesn’t make too many national headlines, but in January it set a dubious record for the worst air quality in the country. The airborne microscopic particles registered higher than that of a city next to a raging forest fire.
The official record of 180 for PM-2.5 air pollution* was subsequently called into question because of measuring differences, but even the revised level was twice what the EPA defines as “unhealthy.” It also remained the highest in the nation for that day.
The mayor and the health department were put in the awkward position of asking residents to feel better about air that was only “unhealthy” rather than “very unhealthy.” In any case, Cache County officials told children, older adults, and anybody with heart or lung disease to stay inside. Even daily joggers were forced to the indoor track or treadmills.
Other than that, the mayor was frequently quoted as saying, “There is nothing we can do.” This may be true, but it ignores the past tense. “Was there anything we could have done?”
Logan isn’t used to setting records or to being called “unhealthy.” For the most part, the city loves anonymity and playing fifth or even sixth fiddle to other, more recognizable Utah destinations. Our size is officially about 45,000, but the metro area is closer to 60,000, with the whole valley topping 100,000. If you haven’t driven through here on your way to Yellowstone, you’ll probably have to reach for a map to find us. We like it that way.
I’m a 23-year resident and, for the most part, an apologist for Logan. The names Washington, D.C., Los Angeles and even Salt Lake City rolled off our tongues like we were spitting out spoiled milk. A lot of us ran away from dirty, crowded cities like those to live here. So, what happened?
Outside of FOX news and radio pundits there are no easy answers. All of the Mormons, gentiles, college kids, geezers and the 75,000 dairy cattle conspired to make this happen. Even the good, green-hearted brethren contributed by burning wood to preserve fossil fuels, even though there are no hardwood trees in sight. It took a whole village to make this happen.
Like many towns we tore up the streetcar tracks in the 1950s to make way for automobiles and parking spaces. We fought starting a city bus line until 10 years ago. We built a downtown bypass route and then quickly gave up on it because we didn’t think the town was growing fast enough to need it.
We gave up on bike paths because we thought we were too rural to need those. We started fencing off the canal paths that crisscross the valley because neighbors were worried about privacy and personal liability. We courted big-box stores and chain restaurants because we had low self-esteem about what our town had to offer.
ALL THESE NEW BUSINESSES replaced Main Street shops and installed drive through windows for everything from dry cleaning to veggie wraps. We fought emission-controls and testing on our cars because we didn’t want the extra hassle or cost. We decided that a view from the mountainsides was worth the commute.
In short, we inhaled deeply from the addictive tailpipe of the personal automobile.
It was easy to convince ourselves that we weren’t addicted, but we were really just so deeply in denial that we couldn’t see it. Upon looking closely, it’s notable that everybody in my neighborhood shovels their driveways, but only about half of them shovel their sidewalks.
Of course, none of this makes us unique sinners on the American dreamscape. What makes us different is geography. The same things that make this a beautiful mountain valley create lethal winter inversions. Nothing that comes out of our cars, furnaces, wood stoves, power plants and even our bucolic Holsteins leaves the valley during these winter inversions. This valley holds its sooty air in a close embrace.
The spin from our mayor and city council, however, is that this is only an aberration. On average, we have much cleaner air than most cities. Dissenters are made to feel like Roy Scheider in the movie Jaws. And like that fictional beach town, Logan is beautiful, but sometimes it can kill you.
Dennis Hinkamp is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of High Country News in Paonia, Colorado (www.hcn.org). He works for Utah State University in Logan, Utah.
* PM-2.5 refers to fine particulates that consist of Particulate Matter with grains of 2.5 microns or less.