EPA administrator sees Smokies through haze

EPA administrator sees Smokies through haze

GATLINBURG, Tenn. (AP) — The head of the Environmental Protection Agency peered out from the highest peak in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park on Monday through a haze of pollution.

From the observation tower atop 6,643-foot Clingmans Dome, EPA Administrator Christie Whitman and U.S. Sen. Bill Frist, R-Tenn., could see hills and valleys 15 miles away. Visitors used to be able to see for 77 miles.

"This is not natural," Smokies air specialist Jim Renfro said as he briefed the visitors.

The nation's most-visited national park got its name for the wispy clouds that form across the Appalachian ridges after it rains, not from what has become an all-too-common vista.

"People expect to get away from air pollution when they leave their homes and go on vacation," Renfro said. "In a lot of cases, it is more polluted here than where they came from."

Whitman, the first EPA administrator to ever tour the 520,000-acre preserve on the Tennessee-North Carolina border, came at Frist's invitation as the Bush administration pushes a "Clear Skies Initiative" to augment the Clean Air Act.

The initiative is intended to reduce today's levels of three pollutants — sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and mercury — by 70 percent over a decade.

Whitman said that will be done by setting pollution caps that power companies can achieve, with the help of purchased credits from other utilities and without "micromanaging out of Washington."

About 100 protesters greeted Whitman at the Sugarlands Visitors Center, chanting "Clear skies, not clear lies" and "Clean air, not hot air."

Don Barger, southeast regional director for the National Parks Conservation Association, called the Clear Skies proposal a "green-wash" for rolling back oversight of coal-fired plants, which are known to be fouling the Smokies.

"It is a shameful violation of public trust," he said.

"Those protesters out there, we are on the same side," said Whitman, a former New Jersey governor. "We absolutely agree on the goals that they want. We need to have clean air for all of us."

Stephen Smith, director of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, contended the plan would actually cut those pollutants by about half in a decade, and make the 70 percent target by 2018. "But there would be no guarantees," he said.

Nationally, the EPA says the initiative could prevent 12,000 premature deaths per year and save $93 billion annually in health care costs.

In Tennessee, Whitman said it could prevent 500 premature deaths and 9,000 asthma attacks annually, while saving $4 billion on health care.

No one was disputing the impact of air pollution on health and the environment. There have been more than 150 days of unhealthy ozone levels in the park in the last five summers, endangering "lungs, noses and leaves," Renfro said.

Smokies biologists say 30 plant species in the park, one of the world's most biologically diverse habitats, have been harmed by acid rain.

"I am very excited about the initiative," Frist said. "Our goal has to be twofold — to decrease those emissions and to be able to do it in an efficient and effective manner that will hold people accountable."

But Frist stopped short of committing to sponsor the legislation when it reaches Congress in August, saying only that he planned to study it closely.

The senator, who was spending the night in the park with his family, said he has been coming to the Smokies since he was a boy.