Craters of the Moon Administrative History

Chapter 6:
RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

Resource Management At Craters Of The Moon:
NATURAL RESOURCE MANAGEMENT: AIR QUALITY MANAGEMENT

Throughout the course of Craters of the Moon's history, resource management issues have emanated from the physically tangible: rocks, trees, grass, and water. The last two decades, however, have advanced a less tangible issue--air quality. Air is a ubiquitous resource; its clarity forms an important part of the visual experience, the perceptions of place as well as space. Likewise, it forms an important measure of the condition of other resources at the monument; polluted air can impair and deteriorate not only visibility, but also vegetation, soils, and water. At the monument, visibility degradation and gaseous pollution have increased in recent years from a variety of sources, both local and regional. Even so, the monument's airshed is relatively pristine, and the management focus is to establish a baseline inventory from which to measure decline, to practice a preventive rather than reactive course of management, and to cooperatively study, monitor, and regulate air quality with the appropriate state and federal agencies.

Air quality, perhaps more than any other issue at the monument, underscores the fact that parks are not islands of pristine environments removed from resource threats common outside their political boundaries in a 20th-century industrialized society. "Air pollution," as David Joseph of the National Park Service's Air Quality Division has written, "can travel hundreds or thousands of miles and respects no geographical boundaries during its voyage." [248] This insight is particularly relevant for the monument's isolated location. Remoteness has contributed to the assumption by many managers that the area's air quality was pristine, with only windborn dust and smoke marring the resource. [249]

This opinion stems from the monument's first air quality testing. On November 12, 1956, the United States Department of Public Health, out of Denver, Colorado, set up a National Air Sampling Network Station at Craters of the Moon--in order "to obtain air samples in a typical wasteland area." [250] The monitoring station was set up to detect airborne particulates, and the monument functioned as a basis for purity. In February 1957, Superintendent Everett Bright reported that "Apparently the air at this place is pretty pure--so pure in fact that we have now been requested by the U.S. Public Health Service to operate our air sampling station...30 times the normal requirement [which] is necessary to find if some evidence of air pollution exists." [251]