Mile-High Smog : Denver Air: Fighting for a Blue Sky

Back in its saloon-brawling days, Denver used to advertise for consumptive settlers, and lured what became known as a “one-lunged army” across the prairie with promises of healthful mountain air.

Denver’s Board of Trade boasted of “instantaneous relief and rapid and permanent cure” for the sickly in the Gold Rush boom town. In 1872, the circus impresario P. T. Barnum was impressed enough to observe that fully half of Denver’s inhabitants had come here expecting to die, only to find that they could not do it.

But a cloud soon appeared on the fabled blue horizon of the Mile High City.

A brown cloud.

The ugly pall of pollution grew darker with each passing year and each generation of settlers, until Denver became as notorious for smog as Los Angeles and, by some measures, even more so.

Started With Indians

Some believe the problem began with the earliest inhabitants, Indians who built sooty bonfires along the eastern range of the Rocky Mountains and hard-riding cowboys on dusty cattle drives. But now public disgust, political pressure and economic anxieties are forcing Colorado’s capital to take drastic steps to clean up the air for the first time.

“For those who say you can’t have confidence in the willingness of people to make sacrifices to clean up their environment--they’re wrong,” Mayor Federico Pena said. “That’s one thing we’ve learned.”

“The second thing we’ve learned is that it’s tough.”

Tough to get motorists to use alternative fuels. Tough to outlaw cozy hearths on cold winter nights. Tough to convince farmers that year-round daylight saving time won’t confuse their cows. Tough to reassure coal miners that clean air won’t cost them their livelihood.

Becoming Clean-Air Model

As word of Denver’s smog-buster effort spreads, residents of other urban areas point to the city not just as an unsightly example of how the West was choked, but as something of a model for fighting pollution.

“Denver’s broken an awful lot of ground for the nation,” Steven Walker, air pollution control manager in Albuquerque, N. M., acknowledged.

In recent years, the once-pristine West has eclipsed the smokestack East as the home of the nation’s smoggiest cities. While Pittsburgh, Pa., may now be cited as a pleasant place to live and breathe, the air in Provo, Utah, and Fairbanks, Alaska, is considered unhealthful.

Last year, eight of the 10 worst cities the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency ranked for carbon-monoxide levels were in the West. Denver was rated the worst, unmatched even by the combined forces of second-place Los Angeles and Long Beach.

Denver was stung, but more than pride was at stake. In a federal crackdown last year, Albuquerque was hit with economic sanctions for failing to meet the EPA’s air standards. An example had been made of Albuquerque and Denver, still struggling to recover from the oil slump, wasn’t anxious to gamble its own federal prize--about $100 million in highway funds.

“I think we’ve gotten religion about doing something about this,” said Michael Schonbrun, chairman of the Metropolitan Air Quality Council, a quasi-public agency formed 2 1/2 years ago to attack the pollution problem.

Oxygen in Gasoline

This year, Colorado enacted the first mandatory alternative fuels-program in the nation. Motorists along the polluted eastern ridge of the Rockies could buy only oxygenated fuels during the winter, when cold-air inversions often cause a brown cloud that blocks out Denver’s spectacular vistas. The program reduced carbon monoxide in the air by an estimated 8% to 9.5% because adding oxygen to gasoline improved combustion in the thin mountain air.

The city’s Better Air Campaign beseeched drivers to leave their cars home one day a week--a plea that Phoenix has echoed--and claimed another 10% reduction in the carbon monoxide level.

Then there were the “smoke cops,” deputized to enforce a wood-burning ban on high pollution days--13 city dogcatchers worked overtime to patrol neighborhoods for telltale plumes from chimneys and follow up complaints from fireplace finks.

“The first night, they forgot to take high-power flashlights and had to just drive around with their car windows rolled down and their noses stuck out to smell for smoke,” recalled Tony Massaro, the mayor’s environmental affairs director.

Wood-Burners Fined

About 200 fireplace warnings were issued this year, and $25 fines were imposed against 23 defiant wood-burners who got caught a second time.

In addition, vehicle-inspection and maintenance programs got tougher, and, over trucking industry protests, legislation was passed last month to require similar testing of diesel-powered vehicles.

Denver also allocated $1.5 million to synchronize traffic lights at 200 intersections, an attempt to cut emissions by speeding up traffic and reducing idling time.

And, even though the EPA has declared a moratorium on penalties while Congress reviews the Clean Air Act, Pena went to Washington and urged congressmen to “keep our feet to the fire.”

The EPA also considers Denver’s air substandard when it comes to particulates--the microscopic bits of gunk from power plants, refineries, diesel engines, dirt roads, wood-burning stoves and fireplaces that together form the foul cloud that is brown in winter and hazy yellow in summer.

“In terms of the number of square miles, it’s minuscule compared to L.A.,” said Carol Lyons, who is heading a study of Denver’s brown cloud. “Denver’s problem would fit entirely into a small corner of the San Fernando Valley. We don’t have to go as far to escape.”

Cold-Air Inversions

How and why the West has become a “smog belt,” however, has to do as much with geography and meteorology as with life styles.

Towns like Denver find themselves in a bowl of pollution as cold air settles in the mountain basins and traps stagnant air. This inversion condition usually means the poorest visibility is in winter.

Car engines, wood fires and other types of combustion also prove to be worse polluters in oxygen-thin, high-altitude environments.

Experts say that Westerners’ love of wide-open spaces aggravates the air problem indirectly. With little mass transit, they rely heavily on cars even in the cities. In rural areas, dirt roads and heavy machinery add dust to the brown cloud. The sanding of roads after snowstorms does the same.

“The long-term key is reducing the amount of vehicle travel,” said Steven Howards, executive director of the air quality council. “It’s like trying to stuff the genie back in the bottle. . . . It’s imposing change on long-established Western life styles. . . .”

Massaro warned that the city’s biggest pride and joy--the Denver Broncos professional football team--could eventually become something of a brown-cloud casualty because of the heavy stadium traffic to and from games during prime pollution time.

Night Games Scrutinized

“At some point, we may have to look at whether this city should host Monday night football games after Nov. 1, and other special events at night in wintertime, too,” he said.

Denver is busy dissecting its brown cloud, trying to pinpoint exactly what’s in it and who put it there.

The independent study, administered by the Chamber of Commerce, is supported with $1.5 million--98% of it from private industries that include competing interests such as coal and natural gas.

The report, expected in August, could bring another round of tough decisions. Already, Conoco Corp., known to be one of the major polluters, is voluntarily switching from coal to gas heat. Pena and other public officials also advocate that the Public Service Co. utility shift from coal to clean-burning natural gas.

In the depressed Western Slope region of Colorado, such talk can be alarming.

“Coal miners in Craig are concerned that, since they sell their coal to the Public Service Co., their mine is going to shut down and they’re going to lose 500 jobs,” Pena said.

Paying the Costs

“That’s a very specific example of (rural) people feeling they are paying to clean up Denver’s air,” he added.

Pena went down into the mine to tell the worried miners “that a lot of people have to make sacrifices and adjustments to deal with the brown cloud. I told them we would work with them to find other markets for their coal--that the last thing I want to do is shut down 500 jobs in Craig.”

Rural resentment also was evident when legislators in this session debated and ultimately killed another anti-pollution bill that would have put Colorado on year-round daylight saving time.

“In the wintertime, the carbon monoxide on most days is an evening rush-hour problem,” Massaro said. “When the sun goes down, you get a temperature drop of 20 degrees and a temperature inversion, with cold air trapped on the bottom.

“The theory is, if we make sunset an hour later--at 6 instead of 5--more rush-hour emissions will occur before the temperature drop and supposedly reduce (air standards) violation days by 12%.”

Rural Opposition

Rural residents complained that children would be unable to do chores before school and would have to wait for the bus in darkness. Cows wouldn’t like it, either, they added.

“They don’t like having to change something they do for Denver,” said Massaro. “If I was a cow, I think I’d be more confused by the clock changing two times a year than if it stayed the same. . . .”

Both Pena and Gov. Roy Romer stressed the economic impact of air pollution during this year’s Better Air Campaign, and anecdotal evidence suggests that smog is costing Denver business.

A survey of executives in charge of relocation for 65 major companies outside Colorado found that 74% of them considered air quality an important factor in deciding whether to move to Denver.

“I hear stories of people talking about bringing in out-of-town staff trying to recruit only at certain times of the day, or not during certain months at all, because of the brown cloud,” said Schonbrun.

The tarnished image could also threaten tourism.

Ski Business Liability

“Most people in the U.S. think Denver’s in the middle of ski country,” Massaro said. “They don’t realize the nearest ski area’s two hours away. Ski areas think there’s some negative impact when they compete with Utah or Jackson Hole (Wyoming). It probably also affects conventions, to a degree.”

Some ski resorts are already preparing for the day when pollution becomes as bothersome in the mountains as it is in the city. The relatively new Beaver Creek has installed special alarms on all fireplaces, an unusual pollution-prevention measure.

When pollution exceeds air quality guidelines, the alarms will glow red as a warning to douse the fire.

“If the system detects, say an hour later, heat in your fireplace, someone will first call you up and then come and knock on your door to ask you to put out the fire,” said resort administrator Mary Morgan.

“That’s what their mountain getaway is all about--pristine skies.”

Civic pride sometimes overshadows the brown cloud. When the EPA ranked Denver worse than Los Angeles for carbon monoxide violations, one irate city councilman wanted Denver to sue the federal agency for defamation of character.

Then there are the die-hards who insist that Denver is overlooking a quick, easy solution to the whole problem:

Just mount giant fans in the Rockies, they say, and blow the smog next door--into Kansas.