Bush EPA wants to smog up national parks

Squashing California’s attempt to regulate CO2 wasn’t enough. Signing off on “Clean Skies” wasn’t enough. Now, the Environmental Protection Agency and Administrator Stephen Johnson want to allow more air pollution in our national parks.

An EPA rules change would average daily air pollutions emissions in and around national parks over a full year, wiping out spikes in air pollution.

Well, I don’t know about you, but I don’t visit national parks over a full year. I visit a specific park at a specific time.

A slew of National Park Service and EPA officials have challenged the rule change, arguing that it will worsen visibility in already-impaired areas, according to internal documents obtained by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

And, it’s being done, the rule change, in a way that will allow more power plants to build near parks.

The National Parks Conservation Association has issued a report estimating the rule would ease the way for the construction of 28 new coal-fired power plants within 186 miles of 10 national parks. In each of the next 50 years, the report concludes, the new plants would emit a total of 122 million tons of carbon dioxide, 79,000 tons of sulfur dioxide, 52,000 tons of nitrogen oxides, and 4,000 pounds of toxic mercury into the air over and around the Great Smoky Mountains, Zion and eight other national parks.

“It’s like if you're pulled over by a cop for going 75 miles per hour in a 55 miles-per-hour zone, and you say, 'If you look at how I've driven all year, I've averaged 55 miles per hour,’” said Mark Wenzler, director of the National Parks Conservation Association’s clean-air programs. “It allows you to vastly underestimate the impact of these emissions.”

Don Shepherd, an environmental engineer at the Park Service's air resources division in Denver, said of the new rule, “I don’t know of anyone at our level, who deals with this day to day, that likes it or thinks it's going to make sense.

“We really want to have clean air at national parks all the time, and not just at average times,” Shepherd said in a telephone interview. “All of our national parks have impaired visibility. . . . It would really be a setback in trying to make progress.”

You know what to do, after reading the rest of the report.

Go to my links list on the right, click on “Earthjustice,” and find out how to donate. Because the National Park Service deserves a good lawyer.

And, as a violation of the NPS’s Organic Act, this is definitely actionable.