Visitors to hazy national parks and wilderness areas once again might see a clear day -- even if not forever -- under new rules that will require power plants, steel mills and other facilities to cut pollution by a million tons a year.
WASHINGTON — Visitors to hazy national parks and wilderness areas once again might see a clear day -- even if not forever -- under new rules that will require power plants, steel mills and other facilities to cut pollution by a million tons a year.
The Environmental Protection Agency rules issued Wednesday direct state officials to specify what plants will have to make the cuts and by how much.
"States are now required to go out and identify these facilities and then determine what the best available retrofit technology is," said Jeff Holmstead, head of air quality for EPA. "We don't expect that any states will fail to do this."
As part of a 2003 court settlement with an environmental group, New York-based Environmental Defense, the EPA agreed to have states impose limits on air pollution, often from sources hundreds of miles away, to reduce haze and visibility problems in 156 national parks and wilderness areas. States will now have to submit new plans by December 2007 on how to do that.
But the group, which sued to enforce the Clean Air Act, says the Bush administration weakened the final rule by allowing states to discount some data on the worst haze.
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"Protective state action enforcing EPA's pollution-control guidelines will be essential to lift the veil of haze from the nation's crown jewels," said Vickie Patton, a senior attorney for the group. "Unfortunately, EPA has made it harder for the states to restore clean air to our national parks by exempting some high-polluting industrial sources from cleanup requirements."
The biggest impact will be in the Great Smoky Mountains and other parks in the Southeast and in Western parks such as the Grand Canyon. Haze is produced mainly by nitrates and sulfates that scatter and absorb light in the atmosphere.
Holmstead said that beginning in 2014, industrial facilities will have to cut 1 million tons of pollution a year -- 600,000 tons of nitrogen oxides and 400,000 tons of sulfur dioxide.
The EPA estimates it will cost about $1.5 billion a year to achieve the reduction but puts the annual benefits at $8.5 billion to $10 billion through fewer premature deaths, nonfatal heart attacks, hospital admissions and lost school and workdays.
The EPA expects an additional $240 million a year in benefits from increased tourism.
"Some areas will benefit more, because they're more polluted than other areas," Holmstead said. "We are predicting improvements in all of them."
Source: Associated Press
