By Todd Richmond and Mary Katherine Wildeman
During the Great Smoky Mountains in 1995 during a hike in the Great Smoky Mounts National Park climbed on the Chilhowe mountain in the hope of looking through the valley below. Everything he saw was a gray mist wall.
Today, he said, he can see about 80 kilometers from this same valley to the mountains of Cumberland.
A 26 -year -old federal regulations known as the regional reign of the mist has helped reduce pollution on national parks, wild areas and tribes reserves, restaurants some of the most spectacular natural views of the country for outdoor lovers like Barger. But environmentalists fear that these gains can be lost after the administration of President Donald Trump announced in March, the rule is one of the dozens of historical environmental regulations that it plans to retreat.
“This means that a promise that was made to the American public is lost,” said Barger, 74. “More and more generations of people will grow as ignorant as I do, not realizing what I miss and I don’t see.”
The congress pushes to clean air on the parks, the wild zones
The mist forms when small particles of air pollution, such as sulfur dioxide or nitrogen oxides, disperse and absorb sunlight, blurring views and reducing visibility.
The Congress modified the Clean Air Act in 1977 to restore and maintain visibility an objective for 156 national parks, wild zones, fauna shelters and tribal reservations in 36 states. This includes places like the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in North Carolina and Tennessee; Grand Canyon National Park; Glaciers National Park; and the limits of canoeing in the canoe region.
After years of drafting and dispute, the American environmental protection agency adopted regulations known as the regional rolle of mist in 1999 to implement the modifications.
The rule requires reaching the conditions of natural visibility by 2064 and obliges states to develop plans which include limits to emissions, time of compliance and surveillance strategies. Ancient installations that emit pollution, such as coal power plants, must adopt attenuation technology such as exhaustors or close periodically to reduce overall annual emissions.
A work in progress
States plans were prey to delays while EPA approves parties and rejects the others. For example, two major petroleum and coal producing states, Northern Dakota and Wyoming, and industry groups have deposited requests before the Federal Court in January to examine EPA decisions rejecting their plans, according to the Harvard Law School Harvard Law Law School law program.
The rule works jointly with other antipollutual federal regulations, but it was crucial to clean the sky on national parks and wild areas.
An analysis associated with data from a national network of surveillance sites from 1999, when the rule was implemented, until 2023 shows that 93% of parks and wild areas have experienced better air quality on clear days. No park or wild areas has seen a significant aggravation in visibility.
Visibility in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park was twice as good by a typical clear day in 2023 in 1999, marking the greatest improvement among national parks.
EPA estimates that between 2007 and 2018, the rule has reduced 500,000 tonnes of sulfur dioxide and 300,000 tonnes of nitrous oxides each year. The average visual beach increased from 90 miles to 120 miles in certain western parks and from 50 to 70 miles in certain oriental parks, according to the Harvard program.
“The most consecutive day of deregulation”
Trump’s EPA administrator Lee Zeldin announced on March 12 that the agency would seek to withdraw 31 historical environmental regulations, including the regional mist. Zeldin described the announcement on the “most consecutive day of the deregulation of American history” and declared in a test published in the Wall Street Journal that the administration “conducted a dagger at the heart of religion with climate change”.
When asked for comments on the regional mist rule, the EPA said it wanted to take into account pollution from outside the United States and natural sources and avoid unnecessary charges for states and industry.
Has the rule harmed energy producers?
In an analysis cost-effects of the rule before it takes effect, EPA noted that it would cost energy producers up to $ 98 billion by 2025 while offering approximately $ 344 billion in benefits such as health care savings.
The producers argue that the ruffing rule has done its job and that it has no sense to continue to impose costs to them.
“These are decreasing yields,” said Jonathan Fortner, President and Manager of the Lignite Energy Council, who advocates the Northern Dakota coal industry. “The air is clean, the data proves it and science supports this.
Two federal properties of Northern Dakota are subject to the rule, the National Lostwood fauna refuge and Theodore Roosevelt National Park. AP analysis revealed that the two sites have experienced spectacular visibility improvements during the five years from 2019 to 2023.
EPA officials did not respond to an AP request for a list of power plants that have closed due to the regional mist. A certain number of groups from the energy industry have not returned any requests for repeated comments, including the US Energy Association and the National Utility Contractors Association.
What is the next step for parks?
Defenders of the rule claim that eliminating it could lead to a reduction in tourism and that visitors to visitors in the regions of the National Park. The National Park Service estimates that 325 million people visited the national parks in 2023, spending $ 26.4 billion in gateway communities.
Nothing seems likely to change overnight. Ecologists expect the Trump administration to continue a return through linguistic revisions to the rule, a process that would require a period of public comments and would probably trigger legal challenges that could last years.
“I watched the Great Smoky Mountains National Park emerge from the chemical mist that has rooted and wrapped it,” said Barger. “It’s just this visceral sense. We had completely lost it. The Clean Air Act works and it is a work in progress. You have to stay with it or it doesn’t work. “
The scientific writer of the Associated Press, Seth Borenstein, contributed to this report.
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Originally published:
California Daily Newspapers
