The air out there: EPA should maintain air-quality standard in parks

Tribune Editorial

Article Last Updated: 07/07/2008 06:53:33 PM MDT

 
There aren't many places left where you can gaze skyward at night and see stars.

    Thankfully, many Western national parks are still among those places. You'd also expect to see panoramic daytime vistas in places such as Utah's Capitol Reef and Canyonlands national parks, but on some days, you may be disappointed. The reason: air pollution.

    The two Utah parks are among 10 nationwide identified by the National Parks Conservation Association as being near to losing the clear air we've all come to expect at our public recreational lands. Others aren't far behind.

    And if a federal proposal to relax air-quality standards is implemented, those scenic views could be further threatened. That must not happen, for several reasons, both aesthetic and economic.

    National park visitors should be able, literally, to get away from it all - the noise, crowds, smog, traffic and nasty fumes from power plants and vehicle exhaust that they probably encounter at home - when they travel to the parks.

    In addition to the purely aesthetic and healthful values, national parks in Utah and elsewhere provide economic vitality for the communities that border them. That's why politicians and business owners in places like Springdale, outside Zion National Park, rightly are calling on the Environmental Protection Agency to maintain the current air-quality standards.

    Three coal-fired power plants pollute the air near Zion National Park, and three additional plants are being developed. Five coal-fired power plants operate within 186 miles of Capitol Reef. The state has OK'd two more, but both have been challenged by environmental groups.

    Instead of pumping more carbon dioxide - the primary cause of global warming - sulfur dioxide, nitrous oxides and mercury into the air, alternative energy, such as St. George's solar and biomass projects, should be the top priority.

    The Utah Division of Air Quality says pollution in some national parks has decreased in recent years. A shuttle system has greatly reduced the number of vehicles in Zion National Park, for example.

    But clean air is easily defiled, and stringent national EPA standards are necessary to protect it.