‘Tis the season to be coughing: November and December
are the worst months for Phoenix’s air quality, says David
Feuerherd of the American Lung Association of Arizona. “Picture
somebody … shoveling dirt down your bronchial tubes.”
Officials in the Valley of the Sun say the
area’s familiar brown cloud is caused by “fugitive dust,” brought
on in large part by the area’s continuing development boom: Phoenix
is now the nation’s fastest-growing large city. Surrounding
Maricopa County has a 23 percent growth rate, with more than
700,000 people moving there since 1990.
Phoenix’s
air quality is well below national health standards, and the cases
of valley fever in Arizona has doubled in recent years. An illness
whose symptoms can range from fatigue to fungus in bones or the
lining of the brain, valley fever is a pathogen that lives quietly
in the ground until soil is disturbed. The cost of hospitalizing
valley fever patients has been estimated at more than $20
million.
Since an EPA crackdown last year, the
city has paved 70 miles of roads and spent more than $12 million in
dust-abatement programs. Yet last month, the EPA said it would
impose limits on new or expanding businesses by March unless the
area could come up with a workable plan to fight particulate
pollution.
Phoenix has both enthusiastically
embraced development and abhorred its consequences. As part of its
efforts to deal with the impacts of development, in November 1998,
Arizona voters passed Proposition 303, calling for $220 million to
be set aside over 11 years to purchase land to protect it from
development.
Dust “is not inevitable with the
desert,” Feuerherd says. “It’s only when you go in and start
building stucco houses with orange tile roofs that you begin to see
this stuff.”
*Karen Mockler
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Desert development raises dust.
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