Deregulation and budget cuts threaten clean air; lawmaker wants to amend Arizona Constitution

The perpetual brown cloud engulfed downtown Phoenix for nearly four months out of the year. It blurred the skyline, polluting the view out of Dennis Hoffman’s office window just a few miles away in Tempe. The economics expert said that while Phoenix a couple of decades ago was never as bad as Los Angeles, recent steps to address pollution have improved the city’s air quality.

One of the agencies that made that change possible, the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality, is facing cuts as the state scrambles to comply with federal legislation commonly called the Big Beautiful Bill. The Trump administration’s Environmental Protection Agency will on Thursday begin to rescind the 2009 “endangerment finding,” which allows for the regulation of greenhouse gases.

Amid the rollback of federal environmental regulations and state funding cuts, Sen. Lauren Kuby (D-Tempe) introduced a green amendment to the Arizona Constitution. Announced at Environmental Day at the Capitol on Wednesday, the amendment would enshrine access to clean air, clean water and a healthy environment as a constitutional right for all Arizonans.

“In this moment in this country, Arizona’s environmental protections are not just weak, they’re moving backwards,” Kuby said. “By passing this amendment, Arizona voters will lead on environmental protection to show that a healthy environment is a fundamental right, just like free speech or religious expression.”

Metro Phoenix struggles with air quality because it is situated in a valley, according to Sandy Bahr, a member of the Grand Canyon chapter of the Sierra Club. Air pollution gets trapped by the mountains and settles over Phoenix and its suburbs. Bahr said people want to live where air is healthy to breathe.

“Here in the greater Phoenix area, we have very poor air quality,” Bahr said. “If they make those kinds of cuts, then we are going to be out of compliance with the Clean Air Act, and there may actually be implications from an economic perspective as well.”

Poor air quality can cause a number of diseases, including asthma and heart problems, according to health experts. Arizona is subject to cross-pollution from other states that compound the issue.

D. J. Portugal is the director of operations at Chispa Arizona, an organization that focuses on empowering members of the Latino community to advocate for cleaner air and water in the communities worst impacted by climate change.

“Corporations, for the longest time, were able to just do whatever they want and pollute the air and create products that polluted the air, and it wasn’t an issue because the policymakers lived on a side of town that wasn’t zoned for that type of production and air pollution, so they were cool in their communities,” Portugal said. “We want our communities to also be safe to breathe in, because it’s literally our lives on the line.”

The repeal of the endangerment finding would deregulate greenhouse gases, allowing corporations to decide the amount of greenhouse gases are acceptable to release into the atmosphere.

“It’s really the corporate polluters that are responsible for the bulk of, in this case, air pollution,” Portugal said. “If there’s no regulatory standard that they have to adhere to. They have no incentive, right? Their incentive as a corporation is just to make money.”

The specific area most likely to see cuts in ADEQ in the is the local agency on air quality monitoring, according to Hoffman, who is the director of the Center for Competitiveness and Prosperity Research at the L. William Seidman Research Institute at the W. P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University.

Jennifer Allen, chair of the Pima County Board of Supervisors, said that introducing new protections for clean air and water has been an “uphill battle” at the state Legislature.

“We need the facts, we need data, which is what air quality monitoring provides, and it ensures then that regulators know when to step in and put some limits on polluting industries,” Allen said. “It helps set better policies to protect our air.”

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