New Clean Air Rules Threaten National Parks

In their last year in power, the Bush administration could easily just do nothing and let our wild places float in a dangerous limbo, waiting to become someone else's problem. But instead, they're going to continue active, aggressive legislation to threaten public lands, this time by tweaking the Clean Air Act to make it easier to build power plants near national parks and wildernesses. I guess you gotta hand it to them for not taking their lame-duck year lying down.

The new rules rewrite a section designed to protect "Class 1" areas like national parks, which have the highest air-quality protection under the law. The changes could worsen air quality and visibility at many national parks, including Virginia's Shenandoah, Colorado's Mesa Verde and North Dakota's Theodore Roosevelt national parks.

Ironically, opposition to the new rules comes from rank-and-file scientists within the administration: Both National Park Service park managers and Environmental Protection Agency scientists have called out the plan as dangerous and irresponsible.

In one set of comments, the EPA's regional computer modeling staff wrote that the proposal "would allow for significant degradation" of the parks' air quality. An e-mail from National Park Service staff called aspects of the plan "bad public policy" that would "make it much easier to build power plants" near Class 1 areas, which include some Fish and Wildlife Service-protected land.

Don Shepherd, an environmental engineer at the Park Service's air resources division in Denver, said of the new rule, "I don't know of anyone at our level, who deals with this day to day, that likes it or thinks it's going to make sense.

"We really want to have clean air at national parks all the time, and not just at average times," Shepherd said in a telephone interview. "All of our national parks have impaired visibility. . . . It would really be a setback in trying to make progress."

Most national parks have suffered from severe visibility and air quality problems, even in the Rocky Mountain west. Visibility at Great Smoky Mountains National Park has dropped from 80 miles to 15 miles on a clear summer day. Power plants near Great Smoky also deposit acid from emissions, making the soil in the park the most acidic of any monitored in North America.

This is one time I wish the administration would've just revelled in its exiting status and taken a powder. Can't you all just go play golf or something?

— Ted Alvarez

Clean-Air rules protecting parks set to be eased (Washington Post)

---

Friday, May 16, 2008 in: Environment & Green Living, News & Events
View Comments (0)

Water Fight!

When choosing which forces of nature to oppose, the smart call is to avoid showdowns with H20

Sorry for the slow posting this week. I'm in deadline slavery mode, and getting ready to leave for a two-person expedition to Denali on May 30th - along with some spring 14er climbs to tune my carcass for another Mac attack. Life's getting hectic, but it's a good hectic.

The impending epics have me thinking about acclimatization and cold, but for most of us, high river levels will form a bigger challenge in upcoming adventures, as winter snows begin heading for the oceans. In fact, by Tuesday I'll probably be looking at the scene of my first stream-crossing disaster.

About 1975, back in the days when orange frame packs and bib overalls were the height of hippie trail chic, I took a washing machine tumble down flood-swollen Snowmass Creek in Colorado while fording to access Pierre Lakes Basin. Most details are dulled by time, but the recollection is still a wrenching montage of stinging cold water, upside down dishragging as my pack filled and sank, and lots of boulders smacking my head as I was carried 100 yards down steep mountain whitewater before clawing my way, shivering, onto a fortuitous log. The old-school cotton and down didn't help much either.  Ahh, the good ole days - Not.

Drowning comes a close second to scrambling falls as the number one killer of backcountry travelers in the U.S. The two trade first place wherever terrain is more conducive to one or the other. But while falling requires the victim to progress into an accident, water - especially flowing or wind-tossed water - fights you actively. It smothers you, pounds you, freezes you and carries you off.

Coming into conflict with water is a big deal because it's an unbelievably powerful adversary. It sucks heat from your body at least two dozen times faster than cold air, and every cubic meter weighs roughly 2,200 pounds, the so-called 'metric ton'. Toss in fast current speed, and it feels like a cross between pillow fighting Mike Tyson, and getting hit by a semi, while having a plastic bag over your face and snowballs jammed down your pants. As the boozing comic W.C. Fields famously observed it's also "bad for the lungs, and fish fornicate in it." Eeeew. Make mine a Pepsi.

After Snowmass Creek I never got swept off a crossing again. But I made up for hiking caution by becoming an ambitious whitewater kayaker. This particularly hobby resulted in years of gorgeous rivers trips and surf sessions I still recall fondly. You ain't lived until you've butt-surfed down the front of a glassy 10-foot wave, watching the sheet of bottle green glass slide beneath you, so clear you can see cobbles and flashing trout. But my kayak career also resulted in several 'Maytaggings' - kayaker slang for violent near-drowning.

Once I got pinned on a boulder while soloing a Class IV creek. It  took a good 10 minutes of struggling to keep my head out, before I finally cut away my snagged spray skirt and swam. The water folded my kayak around the rock like cardboard. Climbing friends who were tracking me in their car had to use a pulley system and climbing ropes to free it. Another time I dropped into a gigantic keeper  'hole' reversal in Cross Mountain Canyon on the Yampa River. The foaming trough was so deep all I could see was sky, but I kept fighting until I was exhausted. Then it windmilled me through a series of end-over-end tumbles and spit me into a providential eddy. If I'd swum, I'd have gone through a dozen more such holes. Another time I was ostensibly safe in the desert, but a flash flood swept two feet below my boot soles as an 8-foot wall of logs and mud blew through the slot canyon at 30 miles an hour.  And on my last kayak re-match, only a couple years ago, I took a half-mile whitewater swim in the Snake River near Jackson, sputtering through huge spring wave trains with a dislocated shoulder.

As liquid prizefighters go, I don't have a good won-loss record. So trust me on this: Harsh water lessons suck. Of all the ways an outdoor adventurer can get the chop, and I've sampled quite a few, I think drowning would be the worst except, perhaps, for thankfully rare consumption at the hands of a lazily feeding bear.

So go into caution mode anywhere your path intersects with water. We need it to live, and we encounter it often, but it's happy to turn the tables anytime you get careless. Always stack the odds in your favor. And if plans go awry, keep on strokin' no matter what. Chances are you'll have plenty of opportunities to drown another day. --Steve Howe

P.S. As I was posting this, my RSS  feed popped up with a drowning incident.  Three young men, joyriding in a stolen kayak, capsized on Lake Wanautta near Orlando, Florida with predictable results - a harsh spanking for mere petty larceny. Also, New Zealand authorities discovered the body of an Israeli hiker went missing along the South Island's Routeburn Track two months ago. Be careful out there.

(What? No one stepped up to depose the Helmet King? Woosies!  >:0)

---

Friday, May 16, 2008 in: Survival
View Comments (0)

News Flash: Obesity Contributes to Global Warming

No, I'm not kidding

Sheesh, as if things aren’t bad enough for fat people in this world. Among other things, they're forced to buy two seats on a plane. They take the blame for driving up the cost of medical care in this country. And now comes this news from Reuters:

Obese and overweight people require more fuel to transport them and the food they eat, and the problem will worsen as the population literally swells in size, a team at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine says.This adds to food shortages and higher energy prices, the school's researchers Phil Edwards and Ian Roberts wrote in the journal Lancet on Friday.

Further on in the story comes this tidbit:

Because thinner people eat less and are more likely to walk than rely on cars, a slimmer population would lower demand for fuel for transportation and for agriculture, Edwards said. This is also important because 20 percent of greenhouse gas emissions stem from agriculture, he added.

After reading this, all I could think was, “Man, someone needs a reality check.” I have to imagine that there are some more critical problems to deal with here regarding global warming, such as, you know, over-population, coal-dependent energy systems, and whether Leo DiCaprio can make everyone trade in their Hummer H2’s for Toyota hybrids.

I don’t doubt that Mr. Edwards has a semi-valid point, but to me this smacks of a game I call “It’s-Someone-Else’s-Fault.” Thankfully, I’ve never had to deal with being overweight, but I can’t imagine that it’s any fun. An obese person already has to deal with scorn, health issues, and what I’m sure is a mess of psychological issues as well. The last thing I’m going to do is blame them for global warming, especially when I just had the audacity to drive one mile for a $3 cup of coffee made from the same beans I have sitting in my kitchen.

What do you think?

Over the last decade Grant Davis has been writing and editing articles about health, fitness, and nutrition. He lives in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

 

---

Friday, May 16, 2008 in: Health, Environment & Green Living
View Comments (0)