President to visit Smokies on Earth Day, join volunteer project

Spokesman Taylor Gross said that the president will visit Cades Cove on Friday to participate in a service project to honor the park’s strong volunteer program and then make remarks about Earth Day.

“The president looks forward to highlighting the volunteer aspect of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and participating in the service project,” Gross said.

“The park’s volunteer program remains the largest in the National Park Service’s Southeast region and the third largest in the nation,” he said.

Last year, 2,129 volunteers donated 111,935 hours to the Smokies, the nation’s most visited park on the North Carolina-Tennessee border. That’s equal to more than 50 permanent staff members, valued at $1.9 million.

Gross said the details of Bush’s service project are still being completed.

The visit will be the president’s 12th trip to the state. The last was a March forum in Memphis where Bush touted his plans to overhaul Social Security.

The office of U.S. Rep. John J. Duncan Jr., a Knoxville Republican, said the congressman plans to join Bush at the park. Gross said other members of Congress also may attend.

Bush could use the backdrop of the Smokies to make another pitch for his administration’s proposed regulation to reduce unhealthy levels of air pollution in many areas of the country. Bush’s latest proposal is called the Clean Air Interstate Rule.

Last month, the Republican-controlled Senate Environment and Public Works Committee deadlocked in a 9-9 vote and failed to pass Bush’s “Clear Skies” legislation to address air pollution concerns. One Republican and one independent joined Democrats to stall the bill and seek another approach.

Environmentalists have contended that the current Clean Air Act’s laws are stronger than Bush’s proposals for change.

“The air quality situation at the Smokies points to the inadequacies of the administration’s policy on clean air,” Don Barger, a spokesman for the National Parks Conservation Association, told The Knoxville News Sentinel.

Barger agreed with a recent statement by National Park Service Director Fran Mainella that the air in the Smokies is improving.

“But cleaner air does not mean clear air,” Barger said. Federal requirements need to do more faster for the long-term health of the Smokies park, he said.

Smokies spokesman Bob Miller said there was a promising air quality study from the federal Environmental Protection Agency a couple months ago about the Smokies.

“The bottom line was the visibility on our worst days had improved substantially, and visibility on average days had improved a little,” Miller said. There was no change in either acid deposition or in ozone haze.

“Hopefully,” Miller said, “we’ve bottomed out” in air pollution measures “and we’re headed in the right direction.”