Years after the Cherokee people named the Smoky Mountains of North Carolina shaconage (shah-con-ah-jey), "place of the blue smoke," coal-fired plants began to foul their fresh mountain air with filthy gray smog.
For too long, a Duke Power plant near the foothills, and others like it in 28 states, have spewed smoke that's polluting a number of national parks like the Great Smokies. To make matters worse, now the EPA is set to reverse a rule in the Clean Air Act that will allow these plants to continue damaging air quality and making people sick.
A Clean Air Task Force report shows highest death rates from NC power plants occurring in the mountain region, with nearly 700 deaths and over 900 related heart attacks in NC in 2010 alone.
North Carolinians and this beautiful national park, still home to the Cherokee, deserve protection from further pollution.
Tell the EPA to Keep the Clean Air Act Clean and Protect the Great Smokies.
We, the undersigned, ask you NOT to reverse the 35 year-old Clean Air Act rule that protects national parks and other areas from coal-fired plant pollution.
The Great Smoky Mountains National Park is one of the most beautiful wilderness areas on the planet, and scientists from around the world come here to study the park's "astounding variety of
plants and animals
unequaled in most temperate areas."
But sadly this area has already been the victim of forest and soil degradation due to acid rain, which is most noticeable in the number of dying trees. According to the National Park Service, this park "receives the highest sulfur and nitrogen deposits of any monitored national park."
Furthermore, says the NPS:
"Views from scenic overlooks at Great Smoky Mountains National Park have been seriously degraded over the last 50 years by human-made pollution. Since 1948, based on regional airport records, average visibility in the southern Appalachians has decreased 40% in winter and 80% in summer. Pollution typically appears as a uniform whitish haze, different from the natural mist-like clouds for which the Smokies were named."
These and other facts about the declining environment of the Great Smokies National Park make it even more urgent that the EPA tighten up, rather than relax its restrictions on sources of pollution to this area, like Duke Power's Marshall Steam Station in Catawba County, NC.
Please take these requests very seriously and protect all our national parks from coal plant pollution.
DON'T reverse pollution protection rules, and Keep the Clean Air Act Clean!Thank you for your attention to these requests.
