Partnership Aims to Improve Visibility in National Parks
EarthVision Environmental News
06/30/00
SALT LAKE CITY, June 30, 2000 - Where people once were able to see as far as 140 miles in areas of the West, pollution is responsible for limiting that distance to a mere 33 miles in the worst areas. A coalition of nine states and about a dozen Indian tribes have been working for the last three years to develop a plan to restore visibility to 16 national parks and wilderness areas on the Colorado Plateau.
The coalition known as the Western Regional Air Partnership has developed a proposal that primarily consists of strategies for reducing sulfur dioxide, the Salt Lake Tribune reported. The haze that limits visibility is primarily from fine particulates and gases in the air that absorb and reflect light. The principle sources of these pollutants are coal-fired power plants, automobiles, the burning of forests and crops and dust from roads and construction sites, the article reported.
In 1977 the US Environmental Protection Agency developed regional haze regulations that allow states to develop strategies and programs to eventually reach a goal of "no man-made impairment." According to the article, the Western Regional Air Partnership proposed reducing annual sulfur dioxide emissions from the current regional level of 600,000 tons to as low as 435,000 tons by 2018. States are allowed the flexibility to develop strategies to meet these goals. If their strategies fall short, however, the partnership would kick in a backup plan that would cap state's emissions from industrial sources but would allow industries to trade credits among themselves on a regional basis, the article reported.