Deep in one of Colorado’s rugged wilderness areas, scientists have found alarming evidence that air pollution attacks the most remote places.
Acid snow, in concentrations so high it rivals acid levels found in lakes in the eastern U.S., has surfaced along the Continental Divide in the Mt. Zirkel Wilderness Area. The snow, which melts into hundreds of streams and lakes, is more than twice as acidic as any other snow measured in Colorado. It may be the worst in the Rocky Mountain West.
Scientists suspect that the acids could kill frogs and salamanders, damage vegetation and harm lakes in one of state’s wettest areas. No one knows how much the wilderness area already has suffered.
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But hundreds of photographs document spoiled views. Peaks that are crystal-clear on good days blur as filthy air moves across the Yampa River Valley into Steamboat Springs and blows northeast into the wilderness area.
“On a bad day you can see the plume coming right over the valley,” said Joan Hoffmann, a Steamboat Springs artist and Sierra Club leader. “Especially against the snow, you can look one direction and there will be this band of brown, tinged with yellow and gray, like stripes.”
Tourists schussing down Mt. Warner at the Steamboat Ski Area can often see the thick, brown haze.
“It’s shocking enough for us, but it’s extremely shocking for them,” Hoffmann said. “They’re coming for this pristine environment. And from the ski slopes it’s incredibly hazy.”
Federal and state health officials think they have identified the source-two smoking power plants directly upwind of the wilderness area. Chemical isotope “fingerprinting” indicates links between the acid snow and sulfur dioxide belching from the stacks of the Craig and Hayden power plants less than 50 miles away, say U.S. Geological Survey scientists who discovered the acid snow two years ago.
Officials at Public Service Co., a part owner of both plants, say regional air pollution or sulfur from hot springs, cars and homes might be to blame for the marred vistas and acid snow. They cite a Geological Survey study conducted last winter that found no change in the level of sulfates in the snow when the Hayden plant was partially shut down.
Environmentalists and government scientists don’t know what to make of that study but find it hard to believe that the Hayden plant, 21 miles from the wilderness area, isn’t a big part of the problem. It has no sulfur dioxide controls and emits 11,273 tons of the pollutant a year.
Documents show that the two coal-fired power plants emit 99.6 percent of all sulfur dioxide and 91 percent of all nitrogen oxide in a three-county area.
Dirty emissions from the plants blow directly toward the mountains.
Under the Clean Air Act, the nation’s most pristine places have special protected status. The 140,000-acre Mt. Zirkel Wilderness Area, which draws 40,000 visitors a year, is one such area.
“The vistas up there are among the most spectacular in Colorado,” said John Turk, a Geological Survey scientist who has done research in the area for a decade and detected acid snow in 1990.
“It’s a very narrow range. You’re walking along a knife edge on the Continental Divide up there. You can look off to the east and see the mountains of Rocky Mountain National Park, to the south to the Flattops Wilderness and down to the Yampa River Valley. It’s really beautiful.”
Under federal law, if officials can identify a source contributing “any” pollution to an area like Mt. Zirkel, the government may order companies to clean up their smokestacks.
The Zirkel case marks only the second time that officials have used the new Clean Air Act amendments to pin poor air at a “Class 1 airshed” to specific sources. The first case involved the Navajo Generating Station, which fouled vistas at the Grand Canyon.
Despite evidence outlined in government documents that the nearby plants cause at least part of the pollution problem, Colorado and U.S. Forest Service officials have not forced the plant owners to clean up their emissions.
In Colorado, government officials want to spend at least another year studying the problem. Under the law, they must “reasonably attribute” the source of the pollution. Public Service Co. will pick up most of the tab for the studies, which could force power providers to spend hundreds of millions for environmental controls.
Sierra Club members say regulators are moving too slowly at the expense of the wilderness area.
They have sued Public Service Co., alleging that operators violated pollution standards more than 16,000 times over the past few years at the Hayden plant.