Tennessee’s National Parks Need Improvements

A group that spent the past decade studying national parks says that Tennessee’s sites are in the same “fair” to “poor” condition as parks across the country.

The National Parks Conservation Association monitored everything from monuments to lady slipper orchids at 80 parks nationwide. The study says Tennessee’s eight surveyed parks face the same challenges as others do across the country.

The Great Smoky Mountains are under particular threat. The most visited national park, the Smokies drew almost 9.5 million people last year. That’s more than the Grand Canyon and Yosemite combined. Ron Tipton works on policy at the National Parks Conservation Association.

“Clean air problems at the Great Smokies, a loss of some of the great natural diversity of the park. I mean, that park is under siege kinda constantly from a variety of insects and infestations that attack its forests,” he said.

As for its air quality, the Smokies fall in the lowest 3% of parks reviewed—the air is just as bad in the park as it is in nearby cities. However, Tipton says there’s reason to have some hope. The report noted a recent agreement between the Tennessee Valley Authority and the EPA, putting to rest a number of lawsuits filed by states over air quality. The TVA committed to, among other things, phasing out some of its coal-fired electricity plants and installing more emissions controls.

The report also looked at three Tennessee civil war battlefields: Fort Donelson, Shiloh, and Stones River. It ranks the sites as above average for the condition of artifacts, buildings, and archives, though it describes Fort Donelson as being “overgrown” and “eroded.”

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Just this month, the park has had six days of “orange alert” ozone levels. But the air is slowly improving. Amounts of ozone and nitrogen contaminants in the air have fallen since the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) installed controls on two of its nearby coal plants.

This April TVA signed an agreement with the EPA, four states and three environmental advocacy groups to make amends for the pollution it has caused. TVA’s board of directors committed to phase out almost a third of its southeastern units by 2018, install pollution controls, and provide $350 million to air pollution reduction projects over the next five years.