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Southern 

 Environmental 

 y Law Center 



201 Wm Main St.. Suite 14 

 Charlottesville, VA 

 22902-5065 

 804-977-4090 

 FAX 804-977-1483 



Carolina! Office 



137 E. Franklin Street. 



Suite 404 



Chapel Hill. NC 27514-3628 



919-967-1450 



FAX 919-929-9421 



Testimony of David W. Carr, Jr. 

 Director, Public Lands Project 

 Southern Environmental Law Center 

 Charlottesville, Virginia 



House Subcommittee on Environment, 



Energy and Natural Resources of 



the House Committee on Government Operations 



April 29, 1994 



The Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) is a non-profit 

 public interest environmental organization dedicated to 

 protecting the special natural resources of the South such as the 

 Shenandoah and Great Smoky Mountains National Parks. As director 

 of SELC's public lands project, I have been involved in an effort 

 to limit and clean up air pollution in those two parks for the 

 past four years. These parks host roughly 10 million visitors 

 every year. 



The purpose of the national parks as set forth in the 1916 

 Organic Act "is to conserve the scenery and the natural and 

 historic objects and the wildlife therein and to provide for the 

 enjoyment of the same in such manner and by such means as will 

 leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations . " 

 16 U.S.C. § 1 (emphasis added) . The Shenandoah National Park has 

 the highest sulfur pollution of any park in the country, leading 

 to drastic visibility impairment, acidification of streams and 

 damage to vegetation. Great Smoky Mountains National Park has 

 the highest monitored nitrogen loading of any national park in 

 the country and those pollutants are leading to harmful levels of 

 ozone and adverse impacts to vegetation and aguatic resources. 

 In short, we have two of the most polluted national parks in the 

 country in our region. At present, the park protection 

 provisions of the Clean Air Act are failing miserably to achieve 

 their purpose of preserving, protecting, and enhancing the air 

 guality in national parks. Clean Air Act § 160. 



Furthermore, the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 (CAAA) , 

 which do not specifically address Class I area protection, will 

 not adeguately correct the serious pollution problems we have at 



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