April 16, 2004 Smog is usually perceived as a blight of big cities, not the wilderness areas that urbanites flock to on the weekends. But this week the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) included eight national parks in a list of nearly 500 counties around the country that must come into compliance with new, stricter federal smog standards.
The counties cited in the April 15 announcement violate the EPA's standard for ground-level ozone, the primary component of smog. Most of the counties on the EPA's list are in major urban areas of California, the Northeast and Great Lakes regions, but national parks near these urban centers are feeling the sting of their polluted neighbors.
According to the EPA report, California is the most polluted state, with 40 counties violating the new health-based standard. Four national parks in California were also included on the EPA's list—Sequoia, Kings Canyon, Joshua Tree and Yosemite. Other parks around the country, including Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado, Acadia National Park in Maine, Shenandoah National Park in Virginia, and Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Tennessee and North Carolina were listed as well.
The new EPA rule states that the offending parks and counties will have to produce a plan within three years to reduce smog levels. These "non-attainment" counties, as they are called, will then have a specified number of years to clean up the air, with end dates ranging from 2007 to 2021, depending on the severity of pollution.
The old standard measured ozone-levels during one-hour "peak" periods, whereas the new standard measures ozone-levels over the course of eight hours. The new, longer period is considered a more realistic measure of the pollution levels that affect people daily. The EPA's new standard was actually announced in 1997 but was mired in lawsuits for several years.
According to the EPA, the biggest causes of smog are emissions from cars, buses, trucks, power plants and industrial facilities. When these emissions—mostly nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds—are "cooked" in the sun they turn into ground-level ozone and ultimately smog.
Because the federal standards call for pollution cleanup on a county level, the eight national parks are responsible for reducing on an individual basis, within their counties.
"We're working with the National Park Service to determine how best to address this," EPA Administrator Mike Leavitt said at a press conference in which he announced that Yosemite would be put on the list. "For the most part, the big problem is not in the park; it's outside the park. So dealing with the problem outside the park solves the problem inside the park."
The majority of smog in Yosemite blows in from the Central Valley and Bay Area.
"Although here in Yosemite there's nothing we can do about what's going on in the Central Valley, we can certainly encourage alternative transportation, such as walking and taking bicycles," said Scott Gediman, Yosemite National Park's spokesman.
Gediman stressed that the EPA's announcement does not signal that emissions are necessarily higher, but that the new standard is higher.
According to Gediman, plans are underway at Yosemite to change the transportation system within the park to cut down on emissions from cars. Gediman said the park has just ordered 16 hybrid buses to transport visitors. Visitors will be able to park their cars in a designated lot and take one of the shuttles around the park. Zion National Park, which is not on the EPA's list, has a similar transportation system during the summers.
Other parks in California are also making efforts to clean the air. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, Sequoia and Kings Canyon are also trying to cut pollution by replacing diesel buses with hybrid shuttles.
"This is a good wake-up call for people to understand the choices we make in our daily lives and how they effect everybody," said Gediman.
