Collaboration key to Environmental Challenges Ahead

International Conference brings Stakeholders to Table

 

Park City – Energy development in the West has created new environmental challenges that will require a new era of collaboration between state and federal governments, according to top officials with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).


LeahAnn Lamb, Director of OPPA, Utah DEQ,
introduces speakers at the MSWG Conference
in Park City, Utah June 27th, 2006

Robert Roberts, administrator for EPA’s Region 8 Office in Denver since 2002, said 13 percent of EPA’s budget is spent on energy-related projects. That’s not surprising when considering one-fifth of the total amount of coal in the world is located in Region 8 that covers Wyoming, Colorado, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota and Utah. “I never expected I would be spending as much of my time on energy issues,” Roberts said at the Multi-State Working Group (MSWG) 2006 Conference held here June 26-27.

Richard Otis, deputy associate administrator of the Office of Policy, Economics, and Innovation at EPA’s headquarters in Washington, DC, said EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson has made it clear that, “We will accelerate our pace of environmental protection and enhance economic competitiveness.”

Otis and Roberts joined Richard Sprott, director of the Utah Division of Air Quality in leading a panel discussion on “Energy, Water and Innovation in the West,” one of the plenary sessions at the MSWG, co-sponsored by the Utah Department of Environmental Quality and the Intermountain section of the American Waterworks Association.

Utah has become a leader in solving environmental problems through collaboration, Sprott said. “Our executive director, Dianne Nielson, practices the philosophy of partnership and collaboration. And we have made huge advances by doing so,” he said. “But we also need to look at additional ways of doing things.”

Collaboration and partnership doesn’t always work, Sprott noted. “Any time the three-legged stool of law, policy and science gets broken, the system can collapse. Legal challenges, for instance, create winners and losers. And when a court makes a decision, the rulings can be very narrow and oftentimes the resulting disputes get remanded to EPA.”

Even so, Utah has made strides in environmental improvements by taking the collaborative approach. For instance, the Western Regional Air Partnership formed to reduce haze over national parks has made substantial improvements in reducing sulfur dioxide emissions through the collaborative process of working together to set emission targets for industry.

“We need to continue to excel in our state and local partnerships,” Sprott added.

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