The So-Called Clear Skies Act Fouls Air and Weakens Park Protections
Air pollution is one of the most extensive threats to America’s national parks. It harms vital park plants and animals and mars the scenic vistas that are signature features of many of our national parks. Air pollution is also damaging to the lungs of park visitors. Recognizing that clean air is an essential value of America’s national park heritage, Congress set out in 1977 to restore park air quality to near-natural visibility conditions.1 While progress has been slow, the Clean Air Act has successfully reduced some of the sulfur and nitrogen pollution that impairs park air quality. More importantly, the Clean Air Act contains the tools to finish the job as Congress intended—but only if it is enforced.
Enforcing the Existing Clean Air Act Protects Our National Parks
“Congress hereby declares as a national goal the prevention of any future, and the remedying of any existing, impairment of visibility in mandatory class I Federal areas which impairment results from man-made air pollution.” CAA § 169A (1977)
Unfortunately, rather than faithfully enforce the existing Clean Air Act and return America’s parks to healthy air, the administration and members of Congress are seeking to amend the Act and actually roll back clean air protections for America’s national parks. Known as “The Clear Skies Act of 2005,” the plan would replace many of the Clean Air Act’s special protections for park air quality with pollution reductions that are weaker and take longer to achieve.
Congress recognized with the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1977 that national parks and wilderness areas need special protections in order to achieve the goal of returning to natural visibility conditions. But the Clean Air Act needs to be enforced as Congress intended, not weakened, as Clear Skies would.
Clear Skies Would Allow Power Plants and Factories to Escape Cleanup for Decades
“Grandfathered” power plants and factories—the leading sources of air pollution in the national parks—have avoided modern emissions controls for decades. Under Clear Skies these park polluters would be able to continue to escape clean up for several more decades.
Clear Skies would eliminate a key Clean Air Act program that, if enforced, would require old “grandfathered” power plants that have escaped modern emissions controls to finally clean up by installing Best Available Retrofit Technology (BART). Clear Skies offers no alternatives to BART for cleaning up these older, highly polluting plants. Additionally, Clear Skies would allow other “grandfathered” sources of park pollution, such as older refineries, incinerators, steel mills, and pulp and paper plants, to escape the obligation to install BART for 20 more years in exchange for comparatively minor air pollution reductions.
By undermining rather than enforcing the BART program, Clear Skies eviscerates Congress’s intention that special steps be taken to gradually restore clean air in our parks.
Clear Skies Would Strip Park Managers’ Authority to Prevent Park Pollution
Clear Skies would prohibit federal land managers, including park superintendents, from commenting on permits for major new sources of air pollution that are located more than 50 kilometers (31 miles) away from large national parks and wilderness areas. To put this in perspective, virtually all of the power plant pollution that harms the Great Smoky Mountains, our nation’s most visited national park, comes from plants outside the proposed 31-mile review perimeter. A recent study of the impacts of power plants on Big Bend National Park in Texas determined that sources more than 435 miles away in East Texas have a significant impact on air quality in the park.2
Clear Skies Would Result in Increases in Toxic Mercury in the Parks
Power plants are the largest source of toxic mercury air pollution in the United States3, and national parks show signs of damage from mercury. High levels of mercury in largemouth bass and other species led Florida to issue fish-consumption advisories for areas in Everglades National Park.4 Mammoth Cave and Acadia have also been affected by statewide advisories.5 At Big Bend, scientists have found elevated levels of mercury in five different peregrine falcon prey species.6
Enforcing the current Clean Air Act would curb power plant mercury emissions by as much as 90 percent by 2008.7 Clear Skies would eliminate this current cleanup requirement while allowing three times the amount of mercury and providing plant owners a decade longer to achieve the weakened goal. Furthermore, because the plan allows companies to trade their toxic mercury, there is no guarantee that power plants near parks will make any mercury reductions at all.
Clear Skies Would Allow Global Warming Pollution to Continue Unabated
Power plants produce 40 percent of U.S. carbon dioxide emissions—the pollutant largely responsible for global warming.8 Global warming is a major threat to our national parks. Temperature increases attributed to global warming are already melting the glaciers in Glacier National Park in Montana. The largest glaciers in the park have shrunk by a third since 1850, and smaller ones are gone entirely. Scientists estimate that all of the park's glaciers may disappear completely within 30 years.9 In addition, sea levels along the Florida coast are rising today at a rate equivalent to 8-16 inches per century, six to ten times faster than the average rate for this area over the past 3,000 years. Environmental Protection Agency researchers estimate that South Florida seas will probably rise 20 inches above 1990 levels by 2100. Rising sea levels could wash away the nation's investment in a $7.8 billion Everglades National Park restoration plan and destroy critical habitat for a vast array of birds and fish.10
For More Information
For additional information about Clear Skies’ damaging implications for air quality in the national parks, please contact National Parks Conservation Association Clean Air Director Mark Wenzler at 800-628-7275.
1 See U.S. EPA National Air Quality Trends Report, for a general discussion of Clean Air Act provisions and EPA rules concerning park air quality. Available at: http://www.epa.gov/air/airtrends
2 See: e.g. Gebhart, K (2002) Preliminary Particulate Sulfur Source Attributions for BRAVO by Trajectory Mass Balance Regressions. Presentation for BRAVO Conference Call 21 Nov 2002. On file with Clean Air Task Force.
3 U.S. EPA, Mercury Study Report to Congress, December 1997, Volume 2, p. ES-6, Table ES-3; http://www.epa.gov/ttn/oarpg/t3/reports/volume2.pdf.
4 Latest list of state fish consumption advisories available in U.S. EPA, 2002. Update: National Listing of Fish and Wildlife Advisories. Office of Water. EPA-823-F-02-007. May. Also available on the web at: www.epa.gov/ost/fish
5 Ibid.
6 Safe exposure threshold levels of mercury peregrines have not been established. For more information on the study go to: http://www.nps.gov/bibe/naturescience/peregrine-doubt.htm
7 Current law requires EPA to issue “maximum achievable control technology” (MACT) standards for each coal-fired power plant, with compliance due by the end of 2007. In December 2001, the EPA told the Edison Electric Institute that the MACT standard could reduce power plants’ mercury emissions by 90 percent, to 5 tons nationwide. See, U.S. EPA presentation to Edison Electric Institute, December 4, 2001, pp. 4-6, where EPA states “If we did MACT now for coal and … if we subcategorized by coal type … this would result in … tons emitted under MACT … total ~ 5.” http://www.cleartheair.org/epamercury.pdf.
8 U.S. Department of Energy, EIA, Emissions of Greenhouse Gases in the United States 2000. Available at: http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/1605/ggrpt/summary/
9 http://yosemite.epa.gov/oar/globalwarming.nsf/content/ImpactsMountains.html
10 http://yosemite.epa.gov/oar/globalwarming.nsf/content/
ImpactsCoastalZonesSouthFlorida.html?OpenDocument
