Legislative Priorities with HEAL Utah’s Lexi Tuddenham and Dr. Brian Moench of Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment.
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Before embarking on projects like an auto mall, Gonzalez said, cities should answer: Would auto malls stay afloat in the next decades? How much parking would it require in the future? Is there enough room for green spaces in the city? And is this kind of development the best for the community?
Whether you’re a fan of Utah’s so-called Greatest Snow on Earth or not, winter is here, and so are the Wasatch Front’s famous inversions.
Every year almost without fail, we are hit with inversions as we prepare for the busy holiday season. But what are inversions? And what can we do collectively to clean our air?
Lexi Tuddenham, the executive director of HEAL Utah, was glad to see the pilot project proposed. Her group has worked with the legislature to fund free fares on days when Utah’s air quality is at its worst.
“Demonstrating the numbers and the air pollution savings that we will certainly see from this year of free fare is an excellent way to move forwards towards cleaning up our air along the Wasatch Front,”
“Baseload is important but nuclear is certainly not the only way to meet that need — in addition to demand-side management, efficiency upgrades, and smart grids,” she said. “Battery storage technology of many types is at a stage where it can provide the reliable and dispatchable energy needed to pair with intermittent sources like wind and solar. In fact, it is better and far more efficient at load-following than nuclear, which becomes even less cost-effective when it is switched on and off.” – Lexi Tuddenham, Executive Director of HEAL Utah
Meisei Gonzalez, the communication director for the Healthy Environment Alliance of Utah, would like to see the state invest more in public transportation to help clean up the air.
“We believe that by having a robust public transit system, we’ll be able to get more people riding trains and buses rather than a private vehicle,” he said.
Gonzalez said a lot of people would like to take public transportation, but there aren’t routes available to make that a reality.
“We need to see state legislators investing in ways to break down those barriers, ensuring that individuals can access public transit.”
“It’s certainly a step in the right direction,” says Meisei Gonzalez, Communications Director with HEAL Utah, a 501c3 committed to protecting public health and the environment by promoting renewable energy and clean air initiatives. “The IRA utilizes the incentive approach—the carrot not the stick—which we’ve seen achieve better results in Utah. The bottom line is it will help us transition to newer technologies for production and generation of clean energy and away from fossil fuels. It has the potential for wide-ranging positive effects locally and beyond.”
