Conservationists have warned that maneuvers by the Environmental Protection Agency could endanger air quality in national parks.
The Associated Press reported on the EPA's bid to relax a federal regulation known as the regional haze rule in areas like West Virginia. Since the EPA implemented the rule in 1999, it has helped reduce sulfur and smog pollution in more than 90% of parks and wilderness areas.
That effectiveness is in large part due to a measure that mandates that states create plans every 10 years to monitor and cut down pollution. The EPA is now pushing back against plans that hold polluters accountable, as long as visibility hit "projected benchmarks," per the AP.
For West Virginia, that means coal plants will now be able to avoid implementing enhanced pollution-control technologies. A similar situation played out in Colorado, where the EPA rejected a plan because it would close a coal-fired power plant.
The EPA defended these moves by telling states that coal-fired power plants are vital for providing consistent energy to meet rising demands, support American manufacturing, and advancing the U.S. toward leadership in artificial intelligence.
However, conservationists have said that polluters will go unchecked and that visibility at national parks will suffer.
While states may achieve overall goals, the EPA is preventing efforts to rein in harmful practices in the oil, coal, and gas industries.
It could also be extending a lifeline to coal plants, which are significantly responsible for planet-warming pollution and are rapidly being shut down around the world.
Jim Schaberl, a former air and water quality manager at Shenandoah National Park in Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains, found that troubling and worried it could undo many of the gains of the last 25 years.
"To try to resurrect coal is like digging up a grave, and this administration wants to dig up that grave," Schaberl told the AP. "It's nonsensical and, I think, lawless."
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