WASHINGTON — The Environmental Protection Agency plans to announce next week that the air quality in areas that include at least eight of the nation's most popular national parks, including Yosemite, is in violation of a new and more protective federal smog standard, National Park Service officials said Wednesday.
Yosemite would join a roster of national parks -- including Sequoia, Kings Canyon and Joshua Tree in California -- listed as having unhealthy air. The air quality in those three parks already violates the EPA's old and less stringent smog standard, which was based on a one-hour measurement of air quality. That is being phased out in favor of an eight-hour measurement.
Other popular national parks to be newly designated as having dirty air include Rocky Mountain in Colorado, Great Smoky Mountain in North Carolina and Tennessee, Acadia in Maine, and Shenandoah in Virginia, National Park Service officials said.
"The fact that the behavior of society is messing up the cities we have learned to expect, but to have the same effects occur in areas that are supposed to be special national treasures is disturbing, to say the least," said Christine Shaver, chief of the air resources division of the National Park Service.
The EPA's announcement, scheduled for April 15, will identify the counties across the country that exceed the new standard for ground-level ozone, the main component of smog. State and local governments will be required to devise plans to clean up the air by specified deadlines that vary from three years to 20 years, depending on the severity of the pollution problem. The EPA must approve the plans, and areas that fail to meet deadlines face severe penalties, such as a loss of highway funds.
The National Park Service estimates that 112 of its 387 sites -- including national monuments, historic sites, battlefields, seashores and recreation areas -- are in areas expected to be in violation of the new standard, officials said. Point Reyes National Seashore in Northern California and Cape Cod National Seashore in Massachusetts are among those likely to be listed.
More than 110 million people -- almost 40% of the nation's population -- live in places where the air is too dirty to meet the new standard, according to EPA measurements of air quality between 2000 and 2002.
