Air Quality is Personal for Luz

Real Action on Air Quality

As a mother whose daughter suffers from asthma and has developed asthma herself, the issue of air quality is a personal one for Luz. She also knows air quality is an issue that extends beyond our city and affects Utahns across our state.

We know the sources of these health-related pollutants are primarily tailpipes and buildings, which requires multiple actions to meaningfully reduce emissions.

First, we must focus on active transportation (see our "Active Transportation" issue) that includes greater mass transit ridership, alternative modes of transportation, and making our neighborhoods more walkable. 

Second, as buildings will outpace motor vehicles as the top producer of harmful emissions in the coming years, we must focus on our building efficiency standards and identify ways to have older buildings renovated to reduce those emissions. We can begin with city-owned buildings and ensuring that new buildings are designed to be sustainable for the life of the building without retrofitting.

Luz has a solid record on air quality. She sponsored and passed legislation to penalize those who fail to meet car emission standards (H.B. 139). She also sponsored and passed a bill to establish and maintain monitoring facilities to measure and report the environmental impact of inland port development (S.B. 144). Luz also negotiated the ongoing appropriation of $100,000 to fund the air quality observation project, which places monitoring systems on TRAX so air quality data can be gathered across the city and valley (S.B. 3).

Luz is an effective leader that knows how to build bridges on complicated issues. She knows that Salt Lake City needs to work together with the state, Salt Lake County, and neighboring cities to address this critical issue. Luz has the relationships, the reputation and the record to build consensus and make real progress on air quality.

Read more about Luz's vision for Salt Lake City HERE.