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Air Quality in Rocky Mountain National Park Focus of Colorado Air Quality Control Commission Meeting

Release Date: 3/16/2005
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Denver -- Representatives from federal and state agencies, including research scientists and air pollution experts, will provide an update on air quality within Rocky Mountain National Park at a meeting of the Colorado Air Quality Control Commission Friday.

The meeting is scheduled to begin at 8:30 a.m. in the conference center at the Rocky Mountain Park Holiday Inn, 101 South Saint Vrain in Estes Park. It is open to the public. Although the commission regularly meets in Denver, one or more meetings a year are held in locations elsewhere in Colorado if issues affecting a particular community or region within the state are a large part of the agenda.

The U.S. Congress has expressed concern in recent years about air quality in pristine wilderness areas scattered throughout the country. These areas are known as Class I areas, and Rocky Mountain National Park is one of 12 in Colorado. Congress has said that air quality and other environmental conditions in these areas need to be protected.

Technical staff from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Region 8 Office of Air and Radiation, U.S. Department of the Interior’s National Park Service and the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment will present information about current air quality and environmental conditions that are believed to be occurring in Rocky Mountain National Park, as well as the issues the scientific data represent and possible options to address those issues. It is expected that these presentations will introduce a discussion on what next steps would be appropriate to better understand the environmental mechanisms involved.

The agenda for Friday’s meeting can be viewed online and downloaded at: http://www.cdphe.state.co.us/op/aqcc/aqccdown/Agenda.pdf.

Those interested also can visit the Web site of the Rocky Mountain National Park Initiative, a group formed to study and formulate options to address air quality issues facing the park. This site provides a clearinghouse for the initiative's information: http://www.cdphe.state.co.us/ap/rmnp.html

Participants in the initiative include the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment’s Air Pollution Control Division, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Region 8 Air and Radiation Program, the Air Resources Division of the U.S. Department of the Interior’s National Park Service and the USDA Forest Service.

EPA's Region 8 office in Denver works to protect human health and the environment in Colorado, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah, Wyoming and 27 sovereign tribal nations. We share this challenging work with many partners -- federal and state agencies, state, local and tribal governments, businesses, non-governmental organizations, communities and individuals.