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Air Quality & Climate Change from Vernal on Tuesday's Access Utah

Oil rig
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Eastern Utah’s Uintah Basin has seen sharp increase in economic development in recent years with oil and gas extraction leading the way. Uintah County has grown by 29% in the last decade. With this growth has come an increasing air quality problem. A coalition of public health and conservation groups sued the Environmental Protection Agency last year, saying the agency is failing to protect the Uintah Basin from high levels of air pollution. Can industry and cars coexist with good air? Do we face a choice between jobs and a healthy environment? And what about climate change? Is oil and gas extraction in eastern Utah contributing to climate change? What can and should be done?

Tom Williams will be in Vernal at the USU Bingham Entrepreneurship & Energy Research Center for Tuesday’s Access Utah . His guests include Seth Lyman, air quality expert and Regional Director for USU’s Office of Commercialization & Regional Development; and State Climatologist Robert Gillies, who will give a talk for UPR Tuesday evening in Vernal titled, “Utah’s Climate Symphony: How is Utah Wetter & Drier at the Same Time?”  

Tom Williams worked as a part-time UPR announcer for a few years and joined Utah Public Radio full-time in 1996. He is a proud graduate of Uintah High School in Vernal and Utah State University (B. A. in Liberal Arts and Master of Business Administration.) He grew up in a family that regularly discussed everything from opera to religion to politics. He is interested in just about everything and loves to engage people in conversation, so you could say he has found the perfect job as host “Access Utah.” He and his wife Becky, live in Logan.