Wednesday, April 27, 2005 | 11:04 a.m.
Nevada may soon join a multistate compact that brought together states throughout the West in an effort to control worsening air pollution at national parks in the region.
For six years a group called the Western Regional Air Partnership has shouldered the responsibility for cleaning up the air over selected areas of environmental concern in the West, including the Grand Canyon National Park and the Jarbridge Wilderness in Northern Nevada, the only such site in the state.
The partnership of state and tribal governments is responding to a federal mandate to clean up the air over the sites. Ultimately, new rules to protect air over the federal sites could affect Nevada and other up-wind states, although the real impact of the rules might not be felt for decades.
Members of the partnership include the federal Environmental Protection Agency, Interior and Agriculture departments, a dozen tribal governments and every state along or west of the Rocky Mountains -- except Nevada.
Nevada and the other states are not in a hurry to make final decisions on cleaning up the air. The deadline for the overall effort is 2064, although the states have to show the federal government they are taking steps toward the goal along the way. The next significant deadline is 2008.
Although the effort to clean up the air in the national parks was launched in the late 1990s, it could take years for improvements to become noticeable. Data released just three months ago by the National Park Service show that throughout the West, and particularly in the Grand Canyon, which is just downwind from Southern Nevada, air quality conditions are generally worsening.
However, state regulators expect the situation to improve.
Colleen Cripps, chief of the Nevada Bureau of Air Quality Planning, said the Silver State may not be a member of the group, but it is still working closely with its neighbors to control air pollution in national parks and other selected federal sites.
Nevada still has to demonstrate to the federal government by 2008 that the state can demonstrate "reasonable further progress" in the effort to remove all detectable man-made air pollution from the selected sites by 2064, she said.
"We've been working on this project since 1997," Cripps said. "We're still in the process of gathering data and developing (pollution control) models and running models."
Much of that effort involves working side-by-side with the 13 Western states that are members of the Western Regional Air Partnership, she said. The models that are ultimately accepted by the federal government will likely come from the partnership, Cripps added.
"It's really important that we understand how they prepare the inventories and how they do the modeling."
Local environmentalists said Nevada would be well to join the regional partnership.
Jane Feldman, an activist with the local arm of the Sierra Club, said formal membership would improve Nevada's position relative to the federal mandates and other states. Notwithstanding Cripps' position that the state agency already fully participates in modeling and research on air pollution, Feldman said joining the partnership would pay off with Nevada's air-pollution control efforts.
"It's always better for us to take advantage of other people's expertise and thoughts, especially when it's such a regional problem," Feldman said. "We're just shortchanging ourselves."
Cripps said she and her bureau do not have a formal position on joining the regional air partnership. However, in a March 15 a letter asking different "stakeholders" how they feel about joining the regional partnership, most of Cripps arguments seemed to support joining.
Many of the same stakeholders rejected membership in the partnership in 1999.
Cripps noted in her letter that some of the factors that led the stakeholders and ultimately the governor's office to reject membership in the regional air partnership have changed.
One concern among those stakeholders, among them the Nevada Manufacturers Association and the Nevada Mining Association, is that membership in the group would mean that Nevada had to agree to whatever the regional organization agreed to do to clean up the air.
Cripps, however, said the bylaws of the organization give any member state a veto over any of the rules or actions that the partnership submits to the federal government.
Furthermore, Nevada should already have steps in place to prove to the federal government that it is cleaning up air pollution impacts; Cripps told the stakeholders that with or without formal membership within the partnership, Nevada should be able to meet the federal mandate until at least 2018, because of improved emission standards for automobiles and the shuttering of some pollution sources.
The biggest benefit to Nevada of formally joining the partnership might be political.
Some stakeholders "felt it would be important for Nevada to join the WRAP because it would improve our public image," Cripps said in her March 15 letter. "They expressed concern that all of the work we are currently doing with the WRAP is not being acknowledged by environmental groups, federal land managers and other regional or national stakeholders and that Nevada is not being viewed as a team player."
Joining the partnership wouldn't cost any more money and could be discontinued at any time, Cripps told the Nevada stakeholders.
Some of the most important of the stakeholders, however, still have their doubts.
"The air quality in Nevada is sufficiently good that even though we do have a class-one area (a protected site) in Jarbridge, we have never really had a problem," said Jonathan Brown, director of environmental and regulatory affairs for the Nevada Mining Association.
He said the expected de-commissioning of the Mojave Generating Station, a coal-fired generating plant outside Laughlin, will bring further downwind benefits to the Grand Canyon with or without membership in the partnership.
"There may be some value from a political point of view (in membership), but from a technical point of view, we're not sure what there is to gain," Brown said.
The organization, which represents one of the state's most powerful industries, will consider the issue later this year, he said.
Ray Bacon, executive director of the Nevada Manufacturers Association, echoed Brown's comments. He said membership in the partnership would likely help other Western states more than it would help Nevada.
Despite the air-quality problems around the urban centers of Reno and Las Vegas, most of the vast Silver State enjoys clear, clean skies, he noted.
"Nevada is the only state that has a substantial body of clean air," Bacon said. If the federal government were to look at the issue from a broad regional perspective, the other states would benefit from inclusion of Nevada's relatively clean air, but their pollution rates could hurt the Silver State, he said.
"If we are a member of the group, the other states are going to bleed our numbers to make theirs look good," Bacon said.
The efforts to improve air quality in national parks, wilderness and other federal sites are a result of longstanding air quality concerns throughout the country. Much of the attention has focused on such parks as the Great Smoky Mountains National Park on the East Coast, but sites in the West are also a concern.
A study by the National Park Service released in January showed that air quality in three of six categories studied got worse in the period from 1994 to 2004 in the Grand Canyon. Ozone, a component of smog, and nitrates and ammonia in rain and snow, all worsened in the past decade.
Cripps said that it is not clear how much of that problem stems from Nevada.
"It's too early to say how it's going to fit together," she said. "We're looking at the regional modeling."
Most of Nevada is part of a "clean air corridor" that contributes clean air to class-one sites in the West. Clark and Washoe counties are the exceptions, Cripps agreed, but despite Clark County's proximity to the Grand Canyon, it is not the only potential culprit contributing to air-quality problems in the canyon.
"There are also impacts from coal-fired power plants that are just north of the Grand Canyon in Utah or Arizona," she said. "It's not just going to be from our emissions."
One positive trend is that Clark County is working to fulfill other federal mandates to clean up smog, fine dust and carbon monoxide pollution. Those efforts will likely pay off for the state's responsibility to show positive movement toward cleaning up the air in the Grand Canyon, Cripps said.
Furthermore, Southern California Edison has agreed to either clean up or potentially shut down the Mojave Generating Station near Laughlin. The plant is suspected of contributing to Grand Canyon pollution.
"Regardless of what happens, there's going to be significant reductions of emissions," Cripps said. The different emissions controls "are all going to have an impact."
Chris Shaver, chief of the National Park Service's Air Resources Division, said degradation of air quality is particularly a concern in the West. The regional air partnership, however, is studying 80 proposals for controlling air pollution.
"Right now, Western states are working together to try to implement those programs," Shaver said. "People are thinking about the problem. It's going to be a long haul, but if you don't do anything, it isn't going to get better.
"It's not a problem that any one state can solve."
