When the air in Wyoming gets smoggier than the air in Los Angeles, you know something has gone wrong.
That "something" is the oil and gas industry.
In the drilling rig-studded Upper Green River Basin of Wyoming, levels of smog-forming ozone reached 124 parts per billion earlier this year—worse than the worst day in Los Angeles all last year.
It's not just the people of Wyoming who are noticing a problem. A controversial technology called hydraulic fracturing—or fracking—has led to a gas drilling boom from Colorado to Pennsylvania. But federal air pollution standards for drilling are woefully outdated and do not cover most pollution sources. That means that people who live near the gasfields are left with lung-burning smog and cancer-causing benzene.
Luckily, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has a plan to get us back on track: under a set of proposed rules, oil and gas drillers would be required to use equipment to capture significant amounts of air pollution before it can harm public health.
There's more to be done, especially in the area of reducing drillers' emissions of the potent greenhouse gas methane. But it's an important and vital first step.
Some extreme members of Congress have been making it hard for the scientists at the EPA to do their job lately. That's why the EPA needs to hear from you, to let them know that no matter what the anti-science extremists say, the public supports strong air quality protections.
We have just a few weeks left to make our voices heard. Will you join thousands of others in sending a message to the EPA:TAKE ACTION: Which Has A Worse Smog Problem? LA or Wyoming?
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