Share this page And share with Stumbleupon.com DUST BANNED IN DESERT The EPA air quality standards were intended to reduce soot and
other fine particles in the atmosphere. "However, these standards were
designed for eastern US environments," Sork noted, "and didn't take into
account the fact that in the western US, we get dust storms." The area between Tucson and Phoenix are noted for being the only
place in the US to experience the "haboob", a raging dust storm that
travels across the desert at 50 or 60 mph. "The Sudan and Egypt are the
only other places we know of that have a haboob," Sork added. When a haboob strokes, visibility is limited to a few feet. "Not
untypically, when a dust storm strikes along the freeway, there are
massive pile-ups of cars because no one can see where they are going,"
Sork explained. Arizona used to have dust storm warning signs on its
freeways, but eventually removed them because no one could see them
during dust storms. "The new air quality limits are going to be a major problem in the
West, because on any given day, we're going to be in violation just
because the wind is blowing," Sork said. "About the only way we could
reduce the particulate violation problem is to irrigate the entire
desert, which raises all sorts of other environmental objections." Baja Arizona
intends to fight the new EPA regulations. "The first time they cite us
for a violation that was caused by natural conditions, we're going to
insist that they try and enforce their rules against God, who made the
deserts." EPA officials were not available for official comment. However,
unofficially, we learned that they were not impressed by the dust storm
argument. "It's just another Western state whining about national
standards," noted an EPA source off the record.
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The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency may have
inadvertently outlawed deserts in the United States it was learned
today. "The new limits on particulates (called PM2.5) bans dust in the
air," noted Bill Sork, with the Baja Arizona Department of Air Quality
(BADAQ). "Unfortunately, we have a lot of dust in our air because we're
a desert," Sork said.
