WASHINGTON (AP) – The Environmental Protection Agency is getting up to two more months to complete regulations aimed at improving the vistas in 156 national parks and wilderness areas.
EPA officials reached agreement Friday with the advocacy group Environmental Defense on a new June 15 deadline for the agency to tell states how to reduce hazy air in parks and remote areas. The rules were supposed to have been issued Friday under the settlement of a lawsuit the group filed against EPA in 2003.
The suit asked the court to make EPA enforce the 1977 Clean Air Act amendments that set goals for improving views in 35 national parks, 120 wilderness areas and Roosevelt Campobello International Park near Lubec, Maine, which is overseen by a U.S.-Canada commission.
Affected parks include the Great Smoky Mountains in Tennessee and North Carolina, Acadia in Maine, Glacier in Montana, Grand Canyon in Arizona, Shenandoah in Virginia, Yellowstone in Wyoming, Montana and Idaho, and Sequoia and Yosemite in California.
President Bush is scheduled to speak about air pollution at an Earth Day appearance next Friday in the Smokies.
Vickie Patton, an Environmental Defense lawyer, said pollution levels threaten the health of park visitors and ecosystems, and cloak views in haze. She said her group agreed to give EPA more time so it can further analyze the technical aspects.
The haze is formed by small particles in the air that come mainly from sulfur dioxide from coal-burning power plants in the East and nitrogen oxides from other sources in the West. Other EPA rules also aim to cut those pollutants.
Among the targets of the rule are more than two dozen types of industrial facilities built between 1962 and 1977, including power plants, industrial boilers, smelters, refineries, chemical and cement plants, and pulp and paper mills.
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On the Net:
Environmental Protection Agency: http://www.epa.gov
National Park Service: http://www.nps.gov
Environmental Defense: http://www.environmentaldefense.org
AP-ES-04-15-05 1903EDT
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