By JOHN BARTLIT,
New Mexico Citizens for Clean Air & Water,
and RUSSELL HUFFMAN,
Public Service Company of New Mexico
Few souls will argue that the sweeping vistas of the West aren't a treasure. Natives, newcomers and tourists prize the mountains, canyons and colors equally. For good reason do license plates tell our identity in visual terms--"Grand Canyon State," "Land of Enchantment," "Big Sky."
The enemy of clear visibility is haze. This sometimes murky concern is worth a closer look. Its aspects range from the scientific to civic, legal, and economic.
First, a dab of science: Haze is caused by fine particles in the air. These are very small bits of solids or liquids, small enough to stay suspended in the air, that "scatter" the light. That is, they "knock it about," so less light (and less color) gets from out there to your eye. The white sky light blots more color from out there. Out there are the prizes--things like the Grand Canyon, Monument Valley, and Shiprock. The more particles in the air, the more haze.
Particles get in the air in many ways. Some are natural, such as fog, windblown dust, wildfire smoke, even sea salt. These events were a fact before the desert had people, but the peculiar dryness always made the Southwest's native visibility close to the best on Earth.
Today, people add tiny particles in new ways. Chiefly the particles form from gases--gases that come from vehicle tail pipes and industry smokestacks--gases with strange names like nitrogen oxides (NOX), sulfur oxides (SOX), and things called "Volatile Organic Compounds" (VOCs). As they spread out, for a hundred miles and more, these gases react in the air to make fine particles--thus haze.
Besides spreading haze, these materials also get into lungs, where they can harm health--if in sufficient amounts for sufficient times or in the weakest lungs. And therein is an essential story.
In general terms, it takes a smaller loading of particles in the air to cause widely troublesome haze than measurable health effects. Science can preach for days about why this is true. A simple way to think of it is that haze is made worse by all the particles out as far as the eye can see, whereas health is made worse only by the particles that make it into a person's lungs.
Of course, health can be harmed also by materials that can't be seen. Carbon monoxide and mercury are two such pollutants.
That is the science. Now the civics. Historically, the form of air quality rules was set by health effects. That is, the rules set a maximum level of a pollutant that could stay present for some length of time. Those three little words--"length of time"--have great import for visibility. In the main, clean air rules are not violated until a specified level of pollution is exceeded for a specified time, often it must be for 8 or 24 hours straight.
Again, science can preach for days on the details. Yet, the picture is simple: Health can be okay if winds bring the bad gases from a smokestack to an area for a few hours, then turn and take the gases in some other direction for awhile.
But the eye sees it all. The haze is obvious, whether blown in that direction or this, to spoil that view or this one. Thus, the initial air rules did little to prevent haze. In 1977, Congress recognized the fact and wrote into law the goal to eliminate all man-made impairment of visibility in national parks by 2064. The Clean Air Amendments of 1990 furthered the work.
The Congress set up the Grand Canyon Visibility Transport Commission (GCVTC), and gave it partial funding and guidance. The GCVTC was made up of state and federal agencies, Indian tribes, and industry and environmental groups. Its purpose was to find out the sources that degrade visibility on the Colorado Plateau and to propose remedies.
Check the Internet at www.wrapair.org/ to see the GCVTC's 1996 final report. Its chief findings are: On different days, different sources cause the most haze in a given park. Vehicles and smokestacks are both significant, as are fires, natural and man-made. SOX from smokestacks is the worst single cause, making a third of the overall haze. Since the 1970s, SOX has been reduced and the visibility improved, but further growth in emission sites requires further cuts. NOX emissions are up since the 1970s, and need work. New forms of control offer more efficient, sometimes cheaper, emission reductions. These tools include advanced controls, renewable energy, and legal options that limit total emissions and let emitters choose where to cut (called "cap-and-trade").
The visibility goal of Congress and the findings of the GCVTC worked together to shape a new kind of national rule: the Regional Haze Rule. The rule stands out for many reasons. For one, it deals with haze. For another, the rule has provisions that come from the collaborations begun in the GCVTC.
The rule treats time and money in new ways. The Haze Rule requires emission cuts over a long time, decades in fact, to protect prize vistas. Further, any measures taken must first meet a test of economics to be sure the steps are wise. These features are new.
The vistas all of us enjoy and profit from can yet be our legacy to coming generations. We have new tools for the task. With skill and persistence, we can apply them well, with an eye for the values that bind us together.
This column expresses the combined views of the American Lung Association of Arizona and New Mexico, Arizona Public Service Company at the Four Corners Power Plant, Land and Water Fund of the Rockies, New Mexico Citizens for Clean Air & Water, and Public Service Company of New Mexico at the San Juan Generating Station.
Column of Sunday,