Plan to reduce Smokies haze supported in public hearing

Plan to reduce Smokies haze supported in public hearing

By Morgan Simmons
News-Sentinel staff writer

Using the Great Smoky Mountains National Park as their rallying cry, East Tennesseans are showing strong support for a federal ruling that would reduce haze in some of the nation's most popular scenic areas.

On Tuesday a delegation representing the Smokies traveled to Arlington, Va., for the first of two public hearings hosted by the Environmental Protection Agency regarding proposed guidelines to improve visibility in wilderness areas and national parks.

The EPA plan would enable state air quality agencies to put pollution controls on hundreds of power plants built between 1962 and 1977 that previously have been exempt from federal pollution controls requirements under the Clean Air Act.

Congress exempted the plants after utility companies argued that these plants would eventually be phased out.

Stephen Smith, executive director of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, was one of 20 East Tennesseans who made the 400-mile trip to offer comments at the hearing.

"We were probably the most well-represented areas at the hearing," Smith said. "The significant thing about this plan is that it's based not on tons of pollutants to be reduced at the smokestacks, but on changes in visibility, improvements you can actually see."

Initiated during President Clinton's administration, the regional haze program would direct states to improve visibility in 37 national parks and 119 federal wilderness areas, primarily by eliminating the brown, yellow haze that comes from sulfur emissions from coal-fired power plants.

The regional haze rule calls for the air in national parks and wilderness areas to reach a pre-industrial-era level of clarity by 2064.

"2064 is quite a ways off, but at least this program would set cleaner air as a national priority and a long-range goal," Smith said.

Scientists say that 77 percent of the sulfur dioxide emitted in the Southeast comes from power plants, with the remaining 23 percent coming from automotive vehicles and factories.

Smith said that while the Tennessee Valley Authority has significantly reduced nitrogen oxide, a component of ground-level ozone, the utility has been slower to address haze-causing sulfur emissions.

According to the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, last year TVA's 11 coal-fired power plants across the Tennessee Valley released 700,000 tons of sulfur dioxide in the air.

The regional haze program calls for coal-fired power plants, industrial boilers, refineries and iron and steel plants to be retrofitted with new pollution-control technologies by 2013.

Some industries could take another approach by swapping pollution credits, which companies can earn and trade after reducing their overall emissions. States would also have the flexibility to consider economic factors, energy needs and the remaining useful life of the facilities.

Don Barger, Southeast director of the National Parks Conservation Association, said the plan is a fundamental first step toward restoring the views at national parks.

"There are a lot of things we could do as a society to make our air cleaner in terms of addressing mobile and industrial sources, but there's no scenario that will clean up the air in our national parks that does not include removing the grandfather provision for these older plants," Barger said.

The park's air quality specialist, Jim Renfro, said the federal guidelines would reduce pollutants such as acid rain and ground-level ozone that threaten aquatic life as well as some 30 species of plants.

In a 1996 survey, 84 percent of the park's summer visitors said scenic views were "extremely important" to them during their stay.

Tony DeLucia, of the American Lung Association of Tennessee, said the regulations could make a real difference to human health.

"This plan would remove literally millions of tons of pollutants from the air, which translates into significantly fewer asthma attacks, emergency room visits, respiratory illnesses and cardiovascular deaths," DeLucia said.

Mary Johnson, vice president of the Interstate Development Company, told EPA officials that surveys in towns and communities adjoining the national park show that mountain views typically add $25 to $30 per square foot to property values.

The guidelines for the haze reduction plan will be made final by late summer or fall 2002.

But EPA officials say the long-range program might be scrapped or folded into whatever the Bush administration proposes next month as part of legislation to regulate emissions from electrical utilities.

EPA administrator Christie Whitman last month told a Senate committee the administration might propose a new system of mandatory emission-reduction targets for mercury, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide, but not for carbon dioxide.