Thursday, May 29, 2003 | 11:04 a.m.
A federally mandated effort to reduce haze hanging over national parks such as the Grand Canyon, Zion and Bryce Canyon could bring cleaner skies to Nevada.
But the head of Nevada's air-quality planning agency warned that it could take decades for improvements to be seen in Nevada's federal parks, which include the Jarbidge wilderness north of Elko and Great Basin National Park in the center of the state.
And state officials said Nevada will not participate in a broad western partnership to control visible pollution in the national parks throughout half the country.
Rules adopted by the federal government in 1997 require states throughout the West to draft plans to control smog and haze. This week, the federal Environmental Protection Agency required states to set standards by 2019 for reducing emissions of sulfur dioxide, a key compound in the formation of regional haze.
In Nevada, air pollution from power plants such as the Mohave Generating Station near Laughlin, vehicle traffic and industrial plants often drifts hundreds of miles, creating brown clouds in the clear air of national parks.
The EPA's overall plan for reducing haze from all sources extends 60 years into the future.
Colleen Cripps, chief of the Nevada Division of Environmental Protection's air-quality planning bureau, said Nevada will have a general plan in place by the end of 2007 that identifies where haze-producing pollution is coming from and how it can be controlled.
The effort will include setting a "baseline" standard for air quality in Nevada's parks, she said.
Nevada is one of several states that chose not to participate in the federal Environmental Protection Agency's Western Regional Air Partnership, an effort that includes other states, tribes and federal agencies that are working together to try to clear the air in state parks. The EPA won't know how many states opt out of the partnership until the end of the year.
The ultimate decision to opt out was Gov. Kenny Guinn's, Cripps said.
"We need more time than this plan allowed," said Jolaine Johnson, deputy administrator for the Nevada Division of Environmental Protection. "We were concerned that the group would come up with too proscriptive control requirements on smaller operations that would impact on the economic development in rural areas."
The state can opt out of the recently approved partnership because it is one of nine western states that has already begun work identifying emissions sources affecting the Grand Canyon and the Colorado Plateau, Cripps said.
Although the state is not a formal part of the partnership, Nevada will work closely with the state and federal effort to develop emissions models and find ways to control pollution, she said.
The state is still studying the pollution sources that cause haze, she said.
Cripps said it is too early to say how much Nevada and its industries will pay, if anything, for the air-pollution clean up effort. The state is still producing models of emissions sources and their impact on the environment.
Additionally, work to control air pollution, including new regulations affecting diesel smoke and pollution from power plants, will have an impact on the models that is not now quantifiable, she said.
"There's a lot of stuff in the mill that will have to be factored in," Cripps said. "We don't know what kind of controls we will need, if any."
In or out of the partnership, the federal plan is targeting 16 national parks and wilderness areas for cleanup. A prime target is the Grand Canyon, which has been troubled for years by hazy smog.
States already are working to reduce the haze in the national park. Southern California Edison, the primary owner of the coal-powered Mojave Generating Station, is under a federal court order to install an estimated $1 billion in new technology to clean up its emissions.
Steven Conroy, a SoCal Edison spokesman, said it is still unclear whether the company will close the plant or invest in the new technology.
Other areas should benefit from the federal rules, but Cripps cautioned that people may not see much visible improvement in Nevada's parks and wilderness areas for years after that.
"I'm not sure that we are going to see in our lifetimes a perceptual change," she said -- in large part because both the Jarbidge wilderness and Great Basin National Park already have fairly clean air.
Jane Feldman of the Toiyabe Chapter of the Sierra Club said the plan will be successful if each state participates and the federal government monitors it.
"They can make announcements like this but the hard work is to come up with local plans, then bird-dogging them," Feldman said. "The hard work is still ahead."
The Sierra Club successfully sued the EPA six years ago to reduce power plant and industrial pollution affecting the Grand Canyon, forcing Mohave to add pollution controls such as scrubbers, Feldman said.
"EPA's approval of the first regional plan to begin addressing the haze in our national parks is a step in the right direction," Vicki Patton, senior attorney at the Rocky Mountain Office of Environmental Defense, said. "The western states helped develop this plan, but there will be no air pollution cleanup unless they follow through with concrete action."
archive
