Jade Griffin
Proposal
Professor Jennifer Courtney
English 2010
3-9-13
A Solution for Better Air Quality In SLC
We all know that Salt Lake City has an air quality and inversion issue which
concerns many people who live in the valley. An inversion is when a layer of cold air
is trapped between the ground and overlying hot air producing what we know as
smog. This also causes pollution to get easily trapped in the city. Thus causing the
city to heat up throughout certain times of the year producing a temperature
increase of almost 4 degrees in the downtown portion of Salt Lake City, compared to
the suburban areas near the outer areas of the valley. Black paved roads that
contribute to the temperature increase and inversion, there are many solutions to
help solve this issue. One that I am going to discuss is planting more trees in Salt
Lake City. I believe this will help out our city dramatically with the inversion and
heat, and hopefully it will convice you that it will work too.
The problem that Salt Lake City is facing is the inversion caused by multiple
sources of polluters within the city. We are going to have to take some steps that
will help clean up with the air of our city. And this one easy step is a start, the first
step would be to plant more trees in urban areas of Salt Lake City. This was done in
a simulation, which was conducted by the Akbari’s research group, for the city of
Los Angeles on how planting trees would help benefit a city with a high inversion
problem and high tempetures. Their findings were astonishing! By planting 5
percent of trees within a city, which is about 10 million trees, we would see a 10
percent drop in ozone. It would also drop the tempurature by 4 degrees. (Akbaris)
So with planting more trees within a city, as the simulation for L.A. has proven,
planting more trees benefits a city with a high tempurature and a smog issue.
Recent efforts are underway. A ten-year campaign called “One Million Trees
for One Million People” which is in association with Rocky Mountain Power, Jordan
Valley Water District, Utah State University, and UNLA and many more are plan to
plant one million trees by the end of 2017 in SLC. The only way we can succeed in
this campaign is by helping with planting trees each month for the next four years.
So as our population grows, so will the tree population which will help keep our city
cool, and our air quality just a little bit cleaner. Some people may speculate that it
may be expensive and might not reach this goal, many people might be skeptical and
not want to join in. But the average cost of 10 seedlings is only twenty dollars (it all
depends on the native tree that you wish to buy and plant). But the current number
on how many trees that have been planted for this campaign so far is 382,892.
Hypothetically, if 15,000 people keep planting a tree every month for the next four
years we would even go over our planned goal of of planting one million trees:
2013: 12 months x
15,000 people x 4
years =
2017:
720,000+ 382,892 =
1,102,892
15,000 people may seem like a long shot. We need to get more people
involved and have each person keep contributing to plant one tree for each month
for the next four years. But some regulations still do apply. Since we want to plant at
least one million trees across the valley that’s going to take up some space in some
areas. I will name off a few rules regarding with helping this organization succeed.
I. Be sure you find the right tree for the right place. The list changes from year to
year to avoid overplanting a certain species.
II. There is a PDF document which you can download off of the campaigns website
to help with planting a tree properly.
III. Be sure to plant away from power lines or power boxes (depending on the
predicted height of the tree. For example, if a tree is from the “large list” of trees, be
sure to plant at least 50’ away from power lines. And for power boxes, always plant
10’ away from.
There are many more cool things to learn if you join this orgainization in Salt
Lake City, be sure to check out their website with this following link if you wish to
learn more: http://milliontrees.slco.org/index.html .
If we go thru with this current campaign that SLC has already set up, it will
lead to better air quality, energy saving, water quality, and even crime reduction.
But in the end, this campaign will hopefully drop the Ozone layer, that we contribute
to, by 10-20%, the inversion/smog would decrease throughout all the seasons, and
last but not least our health would be at less hazardous risk from all the pollutants
that linger within our city. There are many other solutions out there, we just need to
find the best one that will help us out the most, next to the million tree campaign. So
far this campaign has been helping us come together as a community and keeping
our city clean and healthy. We all love our city, why not help by contributing to this
campaign by planting trees to make it a cleaner, healthier, and a more beautiful
place. Not just for us but also for the visitors who come to Salt Lake for the
downtown scene with the magnificent mountains surrounding our city. We all hope
to see this happen one day, Why not start now? We are already a quarter of the way
there. Hopefully we will see a change in our air quality over the next 4 years or even
the next 20 years. Lets make Salt Lake City a healthier place for the younger
generations that are soon to come.
Works Citied:
Hayden, Thomas. "Blue Skies Ahead: Hot Ways to Cool Down Our Cities."
Newsweek 23 Nov. 1998: 12. Gale Power Search. Web. 5 Mar. 2013.
"Atmospheric Inversions." Environmental Science: In Context. Ed. Brenda Wilmoth
Lerner and K. Lee Lerner. Vol. 1. Detroit: Gale, 2009. 47-48. In Context Series. Gale
Power Search. Web. 5 Mar. 2013.
“One Million Trees for One Million People” Campaign Source:
Salt Lake County. Slco.org, Web. 5 Mar. 2013
<http://milliontrees.slco.org/>