EPA Aims To Clear National Park Air By 2064 - No, I'm Not Making This Up

[hatrack]

WASHINGTON, DC, April 19, 2004 (ENS) - "States will take a leading role in reducing the haze that plagues many national parks and wilderness areas, according to a proposal released late Friday by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The plan would amend the agency's 1999 Regional Haze Rule, which requires the installation of best available control technology (BART) on older facilities emitting pollution that states determine impair visibility in specially protected areas.

The EPA announced the rule in order to satisfy a deadline ordered by a 2003 court settlement - the proposal would finalize goals for cleaner air in the parks set by the Clean Air Act. The ultimate goal of the law is to restore natural air quality to the parks and wilderness areas by 2064.

That goal will not be easily met - haze pollution reduces natural visibility distances by as much as 76 miles in the eastern United States and 107 in the West. Affected parks include Shenandoah, Great Smoky Mountains, Glacier, Big Bend, Acadia, Sequoia, and Yosemite.

The BART requirements of the rule apply to facilities built between 1962 and 1977 that have the potential to emit more than 250 tons a year of visibility impairing pollution, including fine particulate matter, sulfur dioxides, nitrogen oxides and some volatile organic compounds."

http://forests.org/articles/reader.asp?linkid=30924

[KissMyAsscroft]

1. Nice....

They must crack up when they write this shit.

[donco6]

2. They didn't include Rocky Mtn Nat. Park??

Brother.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

3. Election year bullshit lies

It's easy to make a promise you never have to follow through on.

[treepig]

4. you'll be happy to know other aspects of the parks will be cleaned

up much sooner (although the cynical side of me says it's all election year politicking):


WASHINGTON, DC—Vowing to "restore the pristine splendor of America's natural treasures," President Bush Monday unveiled "Project: National Parks Clean-Up," an ambitious program to remove all toxic petrochemical deposits from national parks by 2004.



Above: Alaska's Denali National Park, one of the many wildlife refuges temporarily closed by Bush (inset).

"Places like Yellowstone and Yosemite were once pure, unspoiled wilderness," Bush said at a White House press conference. "But over the course of the past 10 million years, we have allowed them to become polluted with toxic fossil-fuel deposits, turning a blind eye to the steady build-up of vast quantities of dangerous pollutants. It's time to end this terrible neglect."
Continued Bush: "A comprehensive survey of our parks, conducted by a team of top geologists specially commissioned by me, has discovered giant pockets of petroleum, coal, and other 'fossil poisons' beneath an alarming 38 percent of our national parks' surface area. Though a majority of these poisons are buried under several million tons of rock strata, should they ever seep to the surface and spread into the surrounding areas, they would spell disaster for the parks' precious ecosystems."

To underscore the severity of the crisis, Bush produced a chart illustrating survey results for Yellowstone National Park, where a "staggeringly huge" toxic-petroleum deposit was discovered.

"This amount represents the equivalent of 40,000 supertankers worth of oil," said Bush, gesturing toward a line on the chart. "To put the dangers into perspective, consider this: If these 'petro-poisons' should ever spill out into the park itself, the resulting environmental disaster would be 40,000 times worse than the damage caused by the wreck of the Exxon Valdez."

"We cannot allow such a thing to happen," Bush said. "We must remove this oil now, before it's too late."

http://www.theonion.com/onion3724/bush_vows_to_remove.html