Air Pollution Veils U.S. National Parks

By J.R. Pegg

WASHINGTON, DC, June 28, 2004 (ENS) - Visitors to America's national parks this summer may expect to find clean air and clear skies, but that is not what they will find. Air quality in national parks has improved little since Congress strengthened the Clean Air Act in 1990, according to a new study by three conservation groups.

The report cites the failure to enforce clean air laws as the prime reason for the lack of improvement and warns that air pollution is causing serious damage to the health of many national parks.

"America's national parks are our heritage, but a veil of air pollution hangs over some of our most recognized places," said Jill Stephens, a program analyst with the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA), which authored the report along with Appalachian Voices and Our Children's Earth. "Full and faithful enforcement of clean air programs that restore park air quality is long overdue."

The groups compared data on haze, acid precipitation and ozone pollution collected from 1999 through 2003 at 13 national parks with the most extensive monitoring programs.

The five parks with the worst air pollution are - Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Tennessee and North Carolina; Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky; Shenandoah National Park in Virginia; Acadia National Park in Maine; and Sequoia-Kings Canyon National Parks in California

"In the Great Smoky Mountains, our most polluted national park, ozone pollution rivals urban areas, and even exceeds that of New York City, and Washington, DC," said Harvard Ayers, chairman of Appalachian Voices.

The Great Smokies were named for the natural blue haze, but severe air pollution now endangers the natural resources of the park. (Photo courtesy NPCA)

Ozone pollution is getting worse at more than half of the 13 evaluated parks, with the others showing no improvement.

Sequioa-Kings Canyon, the nation's second oldest national park, rated worst for ozone, with 370 unhealthy air days between 1999 and 2003.

The Great Smoky Mountains ranked second with 150 unhealthy days over the same time period.

In April 2004, when the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) officially designated hundreds of polluted cities and counties as unhealthful because of ozone, it included Great Smoky Mountains, Sequoia-Kings Canyon, Acadia, Shenandoah, Rocky Mountain, Yosemite, and Joshua Tree National Parks along with Cape Cod National Seashore.

These parks all exceed EPA's ozone standard set to protect human health and the report notes that trees and other plants suffer damage from ozone at lower levels than the EPA standard.

"Recent reports confirm ozone and other pollutants that contribute to smoggy and hazy skies do have long-term health effects," said Tiffany Schauer, executive director of Our Children's Earth. "We know that our national parks, places we visit with our children every year, are suffering from air pollution much like that in our cities."

The study finds summer visibility is improving at only two of the 13 parks evaluated - Mammoth Cave and Shenandoah - but all other parks show no change.

And Mammoth Cave still ranks worst for summer visibility - haze cuts natural visibility of 79 to 116 miles down to an average of 17.1 miles.

Trends for acid precipitation are slightly more positive, with the majority of the 13 parks having seen minor decreases.

Great Smoky Mountains rated worst acid for acid precipitation, caused by nitrogen and sulfur pollution.

Some high elevation sites in the park are often as acidic as vinegar and high elevation streams and soils receive more pollution than they can naturally process.

The report details how the vast majority of pollution plaguing the parks comes from cars, power plants and other industrial facilities located outside their boundaries - often from hundreds of miles away.

On a hazy summer day, visibility from Shenandoah's overlooks can shrink to less than a mile. (Photo courtesy EPA)

Stephens says a key part of the equation is the recently proposed EPA rule to reduce park haze. The proposal is the result of a long legal struggle by environmentalists, who went to court to force the EPA to finalize goals for cleaner air in the parks set by Congress in 1977.

A 2003 court settlement requires the agency to adopt final rules by April 2005 to improve air quality in parks by forcing cleanup of industrial facilities determined to be impairing visibility in the parks.

The plan will not set federal emission limits for sources of air pollution that reduce visibility in these areas, rather it allows states to set those limits.

Critics of the proposal say it gives states far too much leeway to exempt individual facilities and far too much time to implement cleanup plans.

The draft rule does not mandate full implementation until 2018, a deadline conservationists say is too far in the future given the scope of the air quality problems faced by many national parks and wilderness areas right now.

However, the proposal could exempt the largest source of hazy pollution in the East - power plants - by allowing other, inadequate programs to serve as a substitute.

"Visitors expect to find clean air and clear skies in all our national parks, but this is sadly not the case," said Stephens. "The current administration must strengthen its proposed park air quality rule and clean up outdated, eastern power plants."