In seventh grade, I visited the Mesa Verde cliff dwellings in Southern Colorado for the first time. The beautiful and ancient Puebloan structures were awe-inspiring for me and awakened my interest in Native American history, particularly those in Mesa Verde.
From that day on, I wanted to know everything I could about the previous inhabitants of Mesa Verde, how they lived, worked, ate, socialized.
In my opinion, the Mesa Verde cliff dwellings are Colorado’s greatest landmarks, which make an impression on thousands of tourists annually. However, their allure may wane in the near future as a result of damage from air pollution.
The 1977 amendment of the Clean Air Act was put into place to protect the air quality of various national parks. The amendment designated certain areas around the country as Class I areas, including Mesa Verde National Park, which receive the highest protection from air pollution1.
However, now the EPA is trying to change the air regulations, which will ultimately lead to greater amounts of pollution in national parks. This attempt must be stopped if we want future generations to experience the pristine national parks that we can experience today.
Under the Clean Air Act, Congress created the Prevention of Significant Deterioration (PSD) program that was meant to protect the air quality in national parks from harmful pollutants. It did this by preventing long-term increases and short-term “spikes” in pollution, particularly during the day and the summer.
In theory, these limitations make it especially difficult for a new plant to be approved near a national park. Before a plant is built an incremental analysis must be done to show how much pollution is already in the Class I area and how much pollution the new plant will contribute.
If the analysis shows that the plant will greatly increase the amount of pollutants in the area, which is usually the case, the plant may not be built.
The futures of the policy and national parks hang in the balance, because the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is actively trying to change the rules that can ultimately lead to excess pollution in the Class I areas2.
The EPA is aiming to make a few changes to the current regulations, two of which will enable power plants to hide pollution spike from regulators and exclude variances from increment analyses. The new policy would replace short-term increments with annual average pollution limits.
This will work in favor of the power plants because they can simply average their hourly and daily emissions over a year and therefore hide the spikes that can cause severe damage within the national parks and particularly to the Mesa Verde cliff dwellings.
According to the current regulations, a plant may be designated as a variance, which allows them to exceed the pollution levels of a Class I area as long as the emissions don’t negatively impact the air quality.
However, these variances must still be included in the increment analysis because they are usually major contributors to the pollution. Under the new policy proposed by the EPA, variances will not be counted in the increment analysis, therefore allowing the power plants in the area to have more flexibility and pollute more2.
Something must be done to prevent the regulation from being changed. As Mike Eisenfeld, a member of a Durango, Colorado environmental group said, “In my opinion, it would reduce protection. If we can’t even protect some of the most important places in the country, what are we doing?”1 Eisenfeld is absolutely correct. We must do all that we can to protect our nation’s national parks and all that they offer.
Mesa Verde National Park is unique in the fact that it houses such beautifully constructed cliff dwellings that represent the history of our nation’s first inhabitants.
These structures are some of the nation’s most treasured landmarks and must not be lost due to unnecessary pollution. The new policy that was proposed by the EPA must not be approved because it puts several national parks nationwide at risk for no logical reason.
We must alert as many people as possible, through the media, of the issue at hand, and rally opposition of the EPA’s proposed policy. The EPA must not be permitted to push through a policy that will have such an immense impact on our environment, our lives and the lives of future generations.
Danielle Gonzales is a sophomore at Stanford University.
