Photo graphic by Lindsay Beebe
On a clear day, Utah’s national parks offer some of the most spectacular vistas on the planet. From the unique hoodoos of Bryce Canyon National Park, to the perch atop Angel’s Landing at Zion National Park, to the iconic arches carved into stone at Arches National Park, these places are special. We have both had transformative experiences in Utah’s parks. We both grew up in New England, and ventured west, drawn to the grandeur and beauty of big mountains and wide open spaces.
For Lindsay, a couple of years ago her two grandmothers, both in their 80’s, made a rare trip across the country to spend a week touring Utah’s Mighty Five National Parks in an RV. At one point, the intrepid octogenarians stood together with Lindsay on the rim of Grand View Point in Canyonlands National Park. As they gazed out from a precipice they noticed that the fiery colors of the canyon walls were muted. The horizon was obscured and blended vaguely into a dull blur where the land met the sky. Lindsay knew the clarity they were missing was due to nearby coal pollution. Massive amounts of pollution from regional coal plants make clear days rare, and the Biden administration just decided to defend a Trump-era rule that blocks a Clean Air Act program from helping.
The Sierra Club and local partners have spent a decade working to ensure visitors to these parks, and those who live and recreate nearby, have clean air to breathe. Aging coal plants in Utah continue to emit so much pollution that visitors like our families, can see the smog hanging in the air. In fact, uncontrolled pollution from Utah coal plants makes the Beehive State the fourth most haze-polluting state in the nation. Views at Canyonlands and Arches National Parks are obscured by this pollution 83 percent of the time.
President Biden can fix that. The Clean Air Act’s “Regional Haze” program requires incremental reductions in haze-causing pollution, primarily from coal-fired power plants, to restore natural visibility to national parks, wilderness areas, and other treasured places. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has the responsibility to issue a plan for Utah that would reduce pollution. President Obama wrote a good plan; then President Trump rolled it back and wrote a bad one; and now just this week, the EPA notified the Sierra Club,The National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA), HEAL Utah, and Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment (UPHE) that it will side with the Trump administration and let Utah’s massive coal plants pollute our national parks. This plan violates the Clean Air Act.
Utah’s Department of Environmental Quality has a poor track record of controlling haze pollution — it’s failed six times to comply with these Clean Air Act requirements. So in 2016, the Obama EPA stepped in where the state had failed, and drafted a Federal Implementation Plan with cost-effective pollution reduction measures to cut haze-causing nitrogen oxide emissions by 76 percent from Utah's Hunter and Huntington coal plants.
But Trump’s EPA — with coal industry lobbyists at the helm — reversed course and wrote yet another plan for Utah’s coal plants that required no pollution controls at all. When the Trump Administration rolled back Obama’s plans for Utah, the Sierra Club, NPCA, HEAL Utah, and UPHE took legal action to require a plan that complies with the law. The Clean Air Act requires power plant operators to either control pollution or switch to cleaner energy sources to protect our treasured national parks — which also attract millions of visitors and help generate billions of dollars in economic activity every year. Since the Trump administration’s pro-coal move, more than 106,600 people submitted comments to state and federal agencies requesting the installation of nitrogen oxide pollution controls on Hunter and Huntington.
The Clean Air Act’s mandate to restore visibility to our National Parks isn’t just about a viewshed; it’s about clean air, it’s about public health, and it's about fairness. Cutting haze pollution keeps our air and water free from toxic pollution, prevents acid rain, improves our respiratory health, and slows climate change. Breathing in this pollution can create serious health problems like respiratory illnesses, decreased lung function, and even premature death.
Right now, the Biden administration is planning to let Utah coal plants keep polluting, while more than 250 other facilities across the country, with less impact on the land and air, have installed pollution controls. The Hunter and Huntington coal plants are the two largest sources of haze pollution in the state by an order of magnitude, and it's past time they did their fair share to clear the air.
The Biden EPA decision to defend Trump’s pro-coal rule is indefensible.The pollution control requirements issued by the EPA during the Obama administration would protect air quality in all of Utah’s iconic national parks, including Arches, Bryce Canyon, Canyonlands, Capitol Reef, and Zion, as well as many other national parks and wilderness areas beyond Utah’s borders, including the Grand Canyon. President Biden can and should reinstate the Obama administration’s rules. Maybe then, the next time a granddaughter and her grandmothers take a once in a lifetime trip to visit our National Parks, they’ll be able to experience the viewshed unobscured, and take a deep breath of fresh, clean air.