Park City Municipal’s Roundtable meeting last week hosted special guests from Utah’s Federal delegation. Senator Mitt Romney and Representative Ben McAdams talked about emissions standards, air quality, clean water and open lands funding.
The virtual city meeting covered topics related to COVID-19 business impacts which includes a discussion of the climate change crisis. Recent federal rollbacks in emissions standards has Republican Senator Mitt Romney concerned about air quality in Utah.
"My view is that we have to get a lot tougher in terms of enforcing more stringent fuel economy standards for our vehicles, trucks and automobiles. I know the administration has moved away from that. I think that’s bad news for Utah particularly those along the Wasatch Front because I mean the inversions that we have are just awful. And I hope we never see that creep up into Park City but I also hope that the clear air of Park City someday covers Salt Lake as well. So that's the area I'm going to focus on.”
Representative Ben McAdams says he is optimistic they’ll pass full funding for the Land and Water Conservation Funds Act. He says it has passed in the house and he is hopeful the bill will pass the Senate.
“Full funding for the Land and Water Conservation Fund that protects so much of our open spaces for trails and parks and Recreation. Park City really has been a leader in the state of preserving our precious outdoor spaces. Mayor Beerman has been the forefront of that leadership preserving our precious outdoor spaces. We see them gobbled up with growth and development. making sure we protect those corridors and so
McAdams also supports restoring Parks funding to address back logged maintenance in National Parks."
McAdams says the COVID-19 Pandemic impacts could be compared with looming climate change crisis. He says the COVID-19 price tag will exceed $3 trillion and it will be a long road to recovery.
“It was going to be devastating no matter what. But money spent on the front end would have been wisely spent and paid for itself on the back end. I think that analogy is very apt to climate change. We know there is a crisis bearing down upon us it is going to have significant impacts globally and very much locally here in Utah.”
The Park City virtual roundtable discussion with Senator Mitt Romney and Representative Ben McAdams can be found here.
