Divisions of the Department of Natural Resources oversee water and mineral resources, parks and recreation, state lands and forests, and wildlife. The Department of Agriculture is concerned with soil conservation and pesticide control. The Department of Environmental Quality has separate divisions dealing with air quality, drinking water systems, water quality, and regulation of water pollution, radioactive, hazardous, and solid wastes.
Air pollution is a serious problem along the Wasatch Front where 70% of the state's population reside. Automobiles are a major contributor to the high levels of ozone and carbon monoxide impacting the communities in the Salt Lake, Weber, and Utah counties. Also of considerable concern is the quality of drinking water.
Other environmental issues of concern in the state are transportation safety of hazardous materials, chemical warfare agent storage and disposal, a proposed nuclear fuel storage site in the western part of the state (which, as of March 2003 had been approved despite widespread protests against it, but had not yet built), and interstate transportation of hazardous waste for disposal. Another environmental problem is the pollution of Great Salt Lake by industrial waste. In 1996, the lake and its surrounding wetlands were designated a Hemispheric Reserve in the Western Hemisphere Shorebird Reserve Network. The move was taken in recognition of the area's importance to migratory waterfowl and shorebirds. In 2003, Utah had 197 hazardous waste sites listed in the Environmental Protection Agency's database, 15 of which were on the National Priorities List. As of 2003, Utah' Carbon County was home to the 2nd-largest landfill in the United States. In 2001, Utah received $26,413,000 in federal grants from the Environmental Protection Agency; EPA expenditures for procurement contracts in Utah that year amounted to $210,000.