National Parks Are Focus of Planned Haze Rule
Last year, as wildfires raged in Texas, New Mexico and Arizona, visitors to Guadalupe Mountains National Park had to settle for a more limited view when hiking up Guadalupe Peak, Texas’ highest point.
“All summer, there was a haze here,” said Jonena Hearst, the park’s geologist. Even before the fires, she said, visibility had been decreasing slightly over time.
The Environmental Protection Agency wants cleaner air at wilderness areas and national parks across the country, including Guadalupe Mountains and Big Bend in Texas. By November, it is supposed to complete a plan that could regulate emissions from dozens of ...
Comments (1)
Cris Sleightholm
I think the EPA has their priorities mixed up. Restoring that wild mountain air and enjoying panoramic views for the few thousand that visit Big Bend each year sounds like a great idea, but what about the millions of people exposed daily to refinery releases and dying of cancers and other ailments directly related to those releases?
The EPA needs to redirect their attention away from haze over the national parks and concentrate their efforts on eliminating the carcinogens that spew out of the stacks of the oil / gas/ chemical refineries along the Texas coast, with Chambers, Galveston, Jefferson and Harris county leading Texas with reported "regulated" releases of recognized carcinogens to the air. Thus, all counties on the downside of this "regulated" release have higher incidences of cancer deaths than the rest of the nation.