Now is the time to stand up for clean air at Voyageurs and Isle Royale National Parks and the Boundary Waters Wilderness Area. The Environmental Protection Agency must hear from you!
These valuable places are threatened by haze-causing pollution from coal-fired power plants and taconite iron ore processing facilities. This is the same pollution that causes heart attacks, asthma, and a host of other public health problems.
Right now, we have an opportunity to significantly reduce dirty emissions from some of our oldest and worst-polluting plants.
Under the Clean Air Act, Minnesota is required to create a plan that will eliminate human-made haze. Unfortunately, Minnesota’s plan won’t reach this goal because industry has not been held to legally required standards. The EPA has proposed to approve Minnesota’s plan, but there is still time to tell the EPA to change its course and require park and wilderness polluters to clean up!
Cleaning up power plants and taconite facilities will not only improve air quality at these national parks and wilderness areas, but will also protect public health throughout the region.
The EPA is currently taking comments on whether it should approve Minnesota’s air plan. If you want to protect the air quality at our national parks and wilderness areas, and throughout the entire region, please send your comments to the EPA by February 24, 2012, asking them to dramatically improve Minnesota’s plan and require coal plants and taconite facilities to use available pollution control technologies to limit their air pollution.
Comments must be received on or before February 24, 2012.
ADDRESSES:
Submit your comments, identified by Docket ID No. EPA-R05-OAR-2010-0037, by one of the following methods:
3. Fax: (312) 692-2450
4. Mail: Pamela Blakely, Chief, Control Strategies Section, Air Programs Branch (AR-18J)
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
77 West Jackson Boulevard
Chicago, Illinois 60604