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  Home Page » Opinion » Editorial » Polluted Parks

Polluted parks

Increased ammonium levels show larger trend

Because they are important natural, historical or cultural resources, America's national parks are closely monitored to ensure the qualities that afforded them protection initially remain intact in perpetuity. Through this monitoring, National Park Service officials have discovered elevated ammonium levels at 16 of its locations, including Mesa Verde National Park - data sufficient to cause "significant concern." There are implications, of course, beyond park boundaries.

Ammonium forms when hydrogen and nitrogen mix with water, creating a compound used regularly as a fertilizer. It is effective in turning grass green, but the substance's effect at sufficient doses is to change soil and water chemistry, affecting the species that rely on a particular environment, ultimately altering a region to become something different than its natural state. That does not bode well for the resources in a given national park, and Mesa Verde is no exception. It also has ramifications for the surrounding areas.

The country's national-park system recognizes and protects a range of resources that are irreplaceable symbols of America's diverse geography, history and natural beauty. Mesa Verde is among a small group of parks that comprise all three values, making its preservation all the more essential to ensuring a complete and varied record of the nation's treasures. Determining how to do it would likely require stepped-up enforcement of, or additions to, clean-air requirements - an effort that is already worthy of pursuing, given existing air-quality problems at Mesa Verde and other national-park sites around the United States.

There is some uncertainty about where the ammonium may have originated, while the substance does occur naturally, it is most frequently associated with vehicle exhaust, factory emissions and livestock-feeding operations. Those origins, combined with the ability ammonium has to alter sensitive ecosystems, suggest that examining what are acceptable levels of the compound - and studying mitigation or reduction methods - are worth considering, and soon.

National parks are already facing an onslaught of factors that are altering ecosystems and threatening resources at sites across the country. The National Parks Conservation Association published a study of air quality at the nation's national parks and found that one in three suffered from diminished air quality, and that 10 were at great risk of even hazier skies, thanks to coal-fired power plants proposed within their airshed. Mesa Verde, situated downwind of two power plants already operating in northern New Mexico, as well as the proposed Desert Rock facility, was among those listed as in danger. The Bush administration's answer to the concern about air quality was to loosen the restrictions of the Clean Air Act on activity near national parks. That is hardly the right direction.

Instead, the National Park System and the Environmental Protection Agency would be well-advised to find ways to combat these troubling trends on treasured public lands across the country. Stepped up enforcement of existing laws is the first step, followed by a review and, perhaps, revision, of those rules to increase protection. After all, the changes being seen at national parks are indicative of impacts beyond the entry kiosks. Air quality and ecosystem damage is a public-health issue as much or more than it is a natural resource concern. It is time to take action to protect both.