what kind of pollution do you have in Flagstaff
well we have the the usual automotive pollution that and although it's not very visible you don't worry about that uh too much uh but uh
uh-huh
we have a lot of wood smoke
uh here now i heat with wood so ah and i'm one of the polluters if you think that wood smoke is a is a source a source of pollution but there are people in this community who
who think that uh
it's gone beyond the part of being part of the charm of the community to the point of being part of the pollution
and
and uh we're very close to the uh to the Grand Canyon
uh-huh
where air pollution is a very big issue
because on of pollution well it's debatable as to whether it's coming from the Los Angeles area on the jet stream or whether it's coming from the Four Corners power plant up near Page Arizona uh
uh-huh
but because it's a national park that's a a big issue there uh here in Flagstaff actually uh it it's something that's unique to us the the biggest pollutant that we have in our air is cinder dust
i'll be darned
and that's because uh we're in a volcanic region
and we uh we have dirt roads uh in a lot of areas that are covered with with cinders but what they also cinders on the highways in the winter time
uh-huh
in place of uh using salt or substances like that that they might in the eastern part of the country and when the snow goes away and it dries up and the cars drive over it we get a lot of cinder dust kicked up into the air and as of
um-hum
you know the largest the largest quantity that's the biggest pollutants that we have to to deal with here
yeah well i i'm sure that cinder dust is pretty unique um in the Dallas area of course the the biggest issue of air pollution is just automobiles
yes
uh we don't have much in the way of heavy industry i mean this is a center for electronics and banking and insurance and you know businesses like that
um
which are not typically bad polluters
right
but um
so i i'd think you'd have to blame most of it on the automobiles here
does does Dallas sits sit in any kind of uh uh i've been there but i don't remember if you sit in any kind of a trough that uh where you get temperature inversions that that capture air pollutants or anything like that
we have we yes we occasionally have them not if they're not
not not too significant
but they do occasionally occasionally occur uh one source of pollution for us is the dust and sand in uh west Texas
sure
in the spring time we'll have parts of Lubbock coming to Dallas
i'm serious these enormous clouds
of sand or dust or whatever you wanna call it
i laugh because i made the journey once from El Paso to Dallas and then continuing east uh to the Eastern Coast of the United States and uh i joked that uh all of the settlers
uh-huh
settled in Eastern Texas where the green rolling hills are and and when they finally beat the Mexicans the Mexicans said fine you can have East Texas but as long as long only as long as you take west Texas too
yeah
okay
all right i can understand that it's interesting though that you mentioned the uh wood stoves
yes
i grew up in New Mexico and but that was long enough ago that uh people didn't really heat that much with wood that was sort of a backward way of doing things if you will
um-hum
uh but now in New Mexico heating with with particularly pinon pine is really an issue
right and
not only from the pollution point of view but it takes many many years to grow those trees
yes
and
and people are chopping them down and heating their houses with them um
and it's it's such a distinctive smell when it burns i had forgotten it i mean i
it it's one of those smells you forget but then when you step outside your mother's house you go oop yep somebody's burning pinon
here in Flagstaff uh juniper is the the very distinctive smelling wood that you can smell in the wood smoke uh and one of the issues here ah it which gets into forest management but has an impact on on air pollution
uh-huh
is that uh we're surrounded by the largest stand of ponderosa pine in the world
uh-huh
but people don't wanna burn ponderosa pine they wanna burn oak which is very hard to find in this region or juniper because it's the more plentiful hardwood
oh sure
and uh aspen uh it burns very cleanly but doesn't put out a lot of heat uh and and ponderosa
we also have pinon but uh it uh it it like ponderosa is very dirty
um-hum
and so they're not preferable woods and so here we have this great abundance of ponderosa pine
and the forest service is really saying we really wish that we could find a way to make it uh less of a
