Target Polluters

The Rocky Mountain News gave us some sage advice to reduce ozone yesterday: target polluters.

We couldn't agree more, we need to target polluters to reduce ozone. Polluters like coal burning power plants, oil and gas drilling, cement plants, and many more all need to do their part to cut ozone forming pollution here in the Denver metro area. Thankfully, the Rocky Mountain News seems to support these efforts.

And as far as cars and trucks go, let's get the cleaner cars on the road and let's also make sure we target the dirty cars and trucks. There's no reason to do one and not the other.

What about the cost? Well, the Rocky Mountain News claims that cleaner cars will "hurt" the average driver. What the Rocky doesn't say is that ozone pollution here in Denver will hurt us even more, driving health care costs higher and robbing children of a healthy future.

But from a cost standpoint, reducing ozone is easy. The EPA's own numbers show that for every $1 spent on reducing ozone, we reap $8.50 back in reduced health care costs and increased productivity. Nationwide, we stand to gain $33 billion from reducing ozone.

Reducing ozone is an investment with enormous paybacks. We hope the Rocky Mountain News continues to support targeting polluters to help clean air air and reap these paybacks.