168 



Mr. Synar. Yes, go ahead. 



[Copies of the slides can be found in the appendix.] 



Mr. HADDOW. Mt. Zirkel is in northwest Colorado. It borders the 

 Continental Divide, it is a 140,000-acre area. 



This is a view in Colorado or in Mt. Zirkel or just along the west 

 edge of Mt. Zirkel. It indicates visibility on a good day. 



We have had anecdotal evidence or comments from the public 

 that we were having visibility impairment in the wilderness. We, 

 in conjunction with EPA and the State of Colorado, put a visibility 

 monitor in that area, and we did show visibility impairment. Some- 

 times just a thin-layered haze, other times we could see what we 

 thought was definite layered haze going into the wilderness, which 

 was a very definite concern to us, along with some days the whole 

 area looks just like this, which is — this does not happen very often, 

 but it does happen occasionally, and it is something we are ex- 

 tremely concerned about as far as visibility impairment. 



Mr. Synar. Who did the background work on this? 



Mr. Haddow. We, the Forest Service, and the State of Colorado, 

 collected the information, all of the slides were analyzed by the 

 contractor that does all the visibility slides nationwide. 



Mr. Synar. Is this an expensive process? 



Mr. Haddow. No, it is not. 



Mr. Synar. Go ahead. 



Mr. Haddow. OK 



Based on this information, plus the information we had on aquat- 

 ic ecosystems — and I will switch up to here, let me see — plus we 

 do have two large coal-fired power plants just up wind. 



Mr. Synar. What plants are those? 



Mr. Haddow. The Craig and Haydon Power Generation Stations. 

 One of those stations, the Haydon Power Generation Station, is to- 

 tally uncontrolled for sulfur dioxide and very poorly controlled for 

 particulates. This source is 



Mr. Synar. So one has no controls and the other one little? 



Mr. Haddow. The Craig plant does have sulfur dioxide controls. 

 They could be better, but they do have some sulfur dioxide controls. 

 The Craig plant is about 40 miles away, the Haydon plant is about 

 20 miles away. Between those two sources, they emit 99.6 percent 

 of all sulfur dioxide in northwest Colorado. 



Based on that information, plus information I will show in just 

 a moment here relative to what we are doing with lakes, we do 

 have, I will say, quite a few lakes in that area that are extremely 

 sensitive, even small additions of sulfate and nitrate, many of these 

 lakes have alkalinity as low as 10 microequivalents per liter. The 

 EPA has said anything with an alkalinity of less than 200 

 microequivalents is extremely sensitive. It would take l/20th as 

 much sulfate and nitrate to change the chemistry of this lake as 

 one EPA is normally concerned about. 



We are monitoring deposition in that area. We get 12- to 14-foot 

 of snow, we have gone in and done quite a bit of snow sampling, 

 looking at snow pits and come up with some very interesting infor- 

 mation. If you look at sulfate in snowpack, in that area we pick up 

 the most of anywhere in the State. 



The same situation with nitrate, and if you add the sulfate and 

 nitrate and then subtract the basic cadmiums, you look at total 



