New rules governing air quality around national parks and wilderness could make it easier for big energy to put a power plant closer to a park or wilderness area near you :
Is that a power plant on the park horizon ? – The Washington Post
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Brian Ertz
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Having lived on the border of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park for 7 years, I became very familiar with our Park’s air quality problems. This link discusses them briefly:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24658362/
Funny that they misspell Smoky by adding an ‘e’.
Anyway, that Park is suffering from air pollution more than any other Park. And with TVA desiring to build more power plants within its air shed, it will become worse.
At least 50 plants have been found with ozone damage in the Park so far, acidity is worsening in the higher elevations, and the Smokies air pollution in the summer months exceeds that of some American cities.
Indeed, the Smokies has the worst rural air in the nation. And it seems like Bush wants to worsen this, even though progress has been made slowly but surely on this issue regionally.
Even Lamar Alexander, a TN Republican, supports current air pollution solutions and works to protect the Smokies. I had actually been cautiously optimistic about the Smokies air problems until this new Bush environmental disaster.
After the Everglades, the Smokies are the most diverse Park in the nation. By far. With the only exception of large mammals, Yellowstone is a biological desert in comparison. By every measurement.
And the GYE is about 25 times larger, too. Yet the Smokies biological diversity exceeds the GYE’s by an almost unbelievable factor by all metrics.
As if a record deficit was not enough George Bush wants to leave us with yet another lasting legacy of one of the worst presidency’s ever in the horizon.