121 



Summarize your Department's relationship to the Environmental 

 Protection Agency's visibility program and to the Class I protection 

 program of the Department of the Interior. Is it your opinion that 

 some forms of regional haze regulations could be based on current 

 knowledge even if more sophisticated regulation might need to wait for 

 additional data or further refinements in modeling? 



Our Class I area sampling program is coordinated with the respective 

 State air quality agencies, the Department of the Interior (DOI) and 

 the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) . Contact and coodination 

 with these organizations has been both frequent and professional. In 

 our opinion, the relationship has been excellent. Currently, we are 

 sampling in those Class I areas that we think may be threatened by air 

 pollution. This sampling program, designed to inventory the resources 

 affected by air pollution (excluding those involved in research) , has 

 projects distributed across all regions. We have collected visibility 

 data at more than 70 Class I areas. Visibility data we collect is 

 shared with the Department of the Interior, the Environmental 

 Protection Agency, and the States. We operate aquatic ecosystem 

 sampling sites and terrestrial floral plots, including lichen sampling 

 sites. We also cooperate in the national visibility monitoring 

 program known as IMPROVE (Integrated Monitoring of Protected Visual 

 Environments) . A list of our FY 1994 projects was furnished to the 

 Subcommittee . 



Finding solutions to the regional haze problem will be both 

 scientifically and politically challenging. Numerous agencies, 

 States, and industries have the potential to be effected by 

 solutions. However, as with the regional ozone problem, we believe 

 the regional haze issue could be addressed by regulation with the 



