November 15, 2024
Letter

Tourists’ pollution

As a recovering asthmatic, I found Susan Young’s story (BDN, Aug. 22) more interesting from what it leaves out than for what it includes. She joined the politicians and tax-exempt entities in blaming power plants in the South and Midwest for the air pollution in Acadia National Park. Only obliquely does her story refer to other sources of pollution: “… the new national park rule was more far-reaching than the court action because it applies to a broad range of polluters, not just power plants.”

Does the “broad range of polluters” include the tail-pipe tourists whose 1-2-3 million vehicles contribute their carbon monoxide to the Maine coast atmosphere every summer? Susan Young’s story is silent on that question.

Our seasonal transitory population spreads money while its vehicles spread scenic haze and poisonous gas from Kittery to Mount Desert Island and return. Acadia National Park itself acts as a powerful magnet and contributes to its own degradation by attracting increasing numbers of visitors in their gridlocking, polluting vehicles. In my unscientific opinion, therein lies the principal source of coastal air corruption, not Southern or Midwestern power plants.

I’m a year-rounder and rarely have suffered an asthmatic attack between Labor Day and Memorial Day.

Carle G. Gray

Sullivan


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