If Utah's Division of Air Quality is "Safeguarding Human Health...by Protecting and Enhancing the Environment," as it claims, why did a group of doctors have to take legal action to stop Rio Tinto/Kennecot's (RTK's) violations of the Clean Air Act in the Bingham Canyon mine?
RTK's Bingham Canyon mine puts Salt Lake City among the most polluted in the country, says Truthout. Furthermore, the mine "...has created the largest mining-related water pollution problem in the world," with surrounding ponds a constant source of heavy metal contamination.
According to Truthout, air pollution is responsible for a broad array of diseases and up to 2,000 premature deaths every year in Utah. But despite RTK's public health threat and its huge profits - $15 billion last year - Utah's Division of Air Quality is allowing RTK to expand its operations by 32 percent!
Tell Utah's Division of Air Quality to make RTK clean up its mine!
We, the undersigned, are appalled that you would allow the expansion of a source of pollution already responsible for making Salt Lake City's air among the worst in the nation.
We are further appalled that it would be left up to a group of doctors and environmentalists to have to do the job your agency is paid by taxpayers to do - the job you claim you are doing.
It should be your agency that ensures that RTK's Bingham Canyon Mine complies with the Clean Air Act, rather than your complacency making it necessary for private citizens to do your work for you.
Your recent permit to allow RTK to expand its operations has just added the most egregious insult to already beyond acceptable injury.
If RTK's profits last year were anywhere near $15 billiion, then it can afford to clean up. But they are not going to as long as CEO Tom Albanese sees resource nationalism as a "curse," and Utah's Divison of Air Quality won't make them see the light.
As
Truthout says, RTK "...is hurting all the residents of Salt Lake City and adding to the premature death total.... For environmental and public health advocates, RTK pursuing and receiving an approval to expand was the last straw."
We request that your agency do its job and require RTK to clean up its mine and that you rescind any permits for expansion until it does so and then expands, if at all, only under strict pollution controls.
