Air Pollution in the Grand Canyon
If you live in a city, your planned sojourn to a National Park may be guided by a desire to see some beautiful sights and breath fresh air.
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Many of our National Parks, including the Grand Canyon, suffer from severe visibility problems, due in great part to pollution in the form of smog and haze. Haze in the Grand Canyon, like haze in any U.S. city originates from both stationary and non-stationary sources. According to the final report of The Grand Canyon Visibility Transport Commission, the political body charged with looking into the issue,
"Research shows that visual air quality in the West experienced a significant decline due to emissions from industrial activity from the 1940s to the 1970s. Visibility-impairing emissions began to decline in the 1970s following enactment of the federal Clear Air Act. Visual air quality at national parks and wilderness areas on the Colorado Plateau has not appeared to change since reliable monitoring data became available in the 1980s."
Industry and transportation contribute the largest percentage of smog forming emissions, with other sources such as fires (both pre-scribed burns and others) and trans-border pollution from Mexico cited as potentially significant contributors.
During the past decade, various regional coal-fired electric utilities having little or no pollution control equipment were targeted as the primary stationary sources of Grand Canyon air pollution. In the 1980s the Navajo Generating Station at Page, Arizona, (15 miles away) was identified as the primary source for anywhere from fifty percent to ninety percent of the Grand Canyon's air quality problems. In 1999, the Mohave generating Station in Laughlin, Nev (75) miles away settled a long standing lawsuit and agreed to install end-of-point sulfur scrubbers on its smoke stacks.
The primary mobile source of Grand Canyon haze, the automobile, is currently regulated under a series of federal, state and local initiatives. The Grand Canyon Visibility Transport Commission cites U.S. government laws regulating automobile emissions and gasoline standards, often slow to change because of the automobile industry's planning schedule, as a primary contributer to air quality issues in the area. They advocate policies leaning towards stricter emission standards via cleaner burning fuel and improved automobile emissions technology.
Closer to home, there is little disagreement that the most visible of the park's visibility problems stems from the park's popularity. It's probably safe to suggest that there are not very many people who do not want to visit the Grand Canyon, and on any given summer day, the park is filled to capacity, or over-capacity. Basically the problem boils down to too many private automobiles vying for too few parking spaces. Emissions from all those automobiles and tour busses contributes greatly to air pollution problems.
<>Local transportation and air quality issues are being addressed one step at a time. Once automobiles were free to roam all the park roads. Currently visitors are permitted to drive private automobiles through the East Rim (SR 64). However, the average visitor, the South Rim tourist, must use one of the natural gas powered or regular busses to visit the vistas. Future park transportation policy may shift to all natural gas powered busses and/or a total ban on private automobile use. In fact, the idea of exchanging private for public transportation systems within U.S. National Parks is gaining more acceptance. For example, in May of 2000, Zion National Park, in Utah, introduced its own bus system that includes transportation of visitors to and from nearby towns.© 2001. Patricia A. Michaels. All rights reserved.