Dirty air: Utahns pay with their environment for selling coal-generated power to the Golden State.
While Utah vehemently resists being regarded as the nation's dumping ground for radioactive waste, it is one of four Western states apparently willing to serve the same purpose for California's air pollution.
That's the message of a new report on coal-fired electric plants in the interior West. The report's authors calculate the amount of pollution spewed in the interior West, where coal plants supply about 20 percent of California's electricity.
The plants - Intermountain Power Project in Utah, Four Corners and San Juan in New Mexico, Mohave and Reid Gardner in Nevada and the Navajo Generating Station in Arizona - emit 10 times more sulfur dioxide than all the plants in California, 10 times more smog-forming nitrogen oxide, 200 times the mercury and 67 million tons of carbon dioxide, which feeds global warming.
Full article at http://www.sltrib.com/utah/ci_3274837