Phoenix’s Particulate Problems Aggravated by Explosive Growth

Airborne dust from construction sites, unpaved roads and farms makes life miserable for Carolyn Aspegren.

“It’s so hard on us who are already compromised. I exhaust myself just breathing,” said Aspegren, who suffers from a genetic form of emphysema and is awaiting a lung transplant.

The 54-year-old Scottsdale woman fears that the dust and other microscopic bits of soot and grime that help form the “brown cloud” visible on most days over downtown Phoenix are bringing her closer to death.

Concerns and complaints about air quality are increasing in the city, even though blowing dust is a fact of life here in the Sonoran desert.

The Environmental Protection Agency is leaning hard on Phoenix and Maricopa County--the state’s most populous county--to clamp down on dust and other particulates. The metro area now ranks second only to Los Angeles in air pollution problems.

Failure to comply with the EPA mandates could result in large cuts in federal highway funds.

But meeting federal standards is a daunting task for the nation’s fastest-growing city, a sprawling metropolis of more than 1.1 million people where each day another 200 residents arrive and another acre of desert is consumed by development. The entire metropolitan-area population is approaching 3 million.

Phoenix and the county have launched a massive road-paving program, started fining construction violators and set up dust hotlines. A lucrative dust-removal industry also has been born.

“I believe we can get this thing under control with education,” said Steve Peplau, manager of the county’s air-quality division. “There are some common-sense things that can be done that some people just don’t understand.”

Roughly 40% of dust comes from construction and 30% from both paved and unpaved roads, according to the Maricopa Assn. of Governments.

The dust contributes to the area’s most visible pollution problem, the murky air that sometimes threatens to totally obscure the skyscrapers and humpbacked Bank One Ballpark that make up the city’s skyline.

But there could be graver and less obvious problems.

A 1995 study concluded that particulates speed up death for some 1,000 respiratory sufferers each year. A federal study found a 10% increased risk of death among babies living in Phoenix, Tucson and other cities with high particulate levels.

Another study found life expectancy among heart patients fell by two years in areas with high levels of fine dust.

Dust also affects asthma sufferers, children and the elderly. Dust in recent years has doubled the number of cases of valley fever, a flu-like illness caused by a soil fungus that becomes airborne when the ground is disturbed.

“It is human activity that is causing the particulate problem,” said Dave Feverherd of the American Lung Assn.’s Arizona chapter.

If Arizona fails to address that by 2001, it will lose out on $100 million in highway funds.

The EPA has already rejected five plans to deal with the problem and won a court order to force the city and county into compliance.

Other actions by the EPA and the county have included fines against contractors for dust violations, including the builder of a new federal courthouse in downtown Phoenix. Fines run as high as $27,500 per violation.

Still, developers and others in the business community can escape. When EPA proposed tougher standards, the business community complained that it could cost nearly $184 million. A federal judge last spring agreed and blocked new standards.

“Dust is one of the biggest single issues we face in the construction of new communities,” said Lynne Reaves, a spokeswoman for builder Del Webb.

The area’s agriculture industry also must find ways to hold down the dust by December 2001.

Dan Thelander, a cotton farmer and official with the Arizona Farm Bureau, said farmers will have to reduce tilling when it’s windy, change irrigation patterns and orient furrows to resist wind erosion.

“We are going to help do our part,” he said. “We were here first before the millions moved here. Most farmers feel we are a small part of the problem.”

The county has 800 miles of unpaved public road, 250 miles of which are in an EPA-targeted area that stretches from Buckeye to Wickenburg to the Tonto National Forest boundary to the Gila River Indian Community. Since 1990 some 400 miles of road have been paved.

Phoenix has paved 70 miles of road and spent about $12 million on dust-abatement programs since the 1998 EPA crackdown, said Gaye Knight, the city’s air-quality advisor.

For now, EPA is giving Phoenix and the county, which also includes the suburbs of Mesa and Scottsdale, some flexibility in controlling dust from unpaved roads and parking lots.

By next June, Phoenix and the county have to pave dirt roads if they carry more than 250 vehicles per day. The county has a 150-car standard.

Whatever the solution, much of it will come too late, from Aspegren’s perspective.

“I moved here 20 years ago for the blue skies and sunshine,” she said. “It’s ruined now.”