EPA moves to relax rules on air pollution in parks

The Environmental Protection Agency is moving forward with plans to alter air quality standards near national parks, despite formal opposition from half its regional administrators.

Currently, measurements near national parks detect pollution spikes that violate EPA limits. Power plants, oil refineries and other sources of air pollution are facing fines for such incidental violations. EPA wants to scrap the method in favor of a yearly average standard, under which emissions over the course of a year must average below the pollution limit. Critics say this move will result in an increase in pollution from power plants.

"The approach that's being proposed is going to underestimate the emissions, both for power plants that are out there now and for the ones that are proposed," Don Shepherd, an environmental engineer at the National Park Service's air resources division in Denver, told Juliet Eilperin of The Washington Post. "It's going in the wrong direction for our efforts to try to improve air quality in the parks." Shepherd notes that according to a study from the 1980s, all of the national parks faced poor visibility due to air pollution, and nothing has really changed since that study. (Read more)

If these and other eleventh-hour changes go through before the end of the Bush administration on Jan. 20, can the new president reverse them? Yes, but it would take some time, reports Joaquin Sapien of ProPublica: "Rescinding a rule would require the new administration to re-start the rule-making process, which can take years and prompt legal challenges. Another strategy that has been talked about lately – getting Congress to disapprove the rules through the Congressional Review Act — carries political risks and has been used only once before. (Read more)