€IS IMPACT IMPRESSIONS,, In 1977, EIS: Key to Environmental Impact Statements abstracted and indexed a total of 1,369 federally generated impact statements. Their subject distribution, broken down by €IS chapters, was as follows:
Air Transportation Defense Programs Energy Hazardous Substances Land Use Manufacturing Parks, Refuges, and Forests Research and Development Roads and Railroads Urban and Social Programs Wastes Water
No. -
YO -
43 43 184 28 29 30
3.1 3.1 13.4 2.0 2.0 2.2
169
12.4
9 280
0.7 20.4
182 67 305 1,369
13.3 4.9 22.3 99.8
~
Thus, water, land transportation, energy, urban and social programs, and parks, refuges, and forests created the greatest environmental concern or had the most profound environmental impact in 1977. Four agencies accounted for better than 71 percent of all the impact statements produced in 1977. These were the Department of Transportation (mainly the Federal Highway Administration), 24.3 percent; Department of the Army (mainly the Corps of Engineers), 17.9 percent; Department of Agriculture, 16.3 percent; and Department of Housing and Urban Development, 12.8 percent. Excluding USDA, whose environmental activities tend to be primarily protective or defensive, we see that the Federal Government itself is the greatest source of potential hazard to the envi ronment. Excerpted from recent editorials in €IS: Key to Environmental Impact Statements, a monthly abstracting and indexing publication. Specimen copies and further information may be obtained from:
R( INFORMATION IE RESOURCES PRESS 2100 M Street, N.W. Washington, D. C. 20037 (202) 293-2605
CIRCLE 10
364
ON
READER SERVICE CARD
Environmental Science & Technology
~~
LETTERS Tall Stacks; SO2 emissions Dear Sir: The October 1977 issue of ES& T (p 946) reviewed briefly the Final Report of the OECD study on the long-range transport of air pollutants (“The use of tall stacks is not always a satisfactory air pollution control measure”). As you may have seen from the acknowledgments in the Final Report, I made a substantial contribution to its drafting and was Secretary to the UK Department of the Environment Project Group for two years. You will have also seen my own review of the findings, published in Nature (268, 92-93). The research program’s Central Co-ordinating Unit (Norwegian Institute for Air Research) and I put considerable effort into preparing a report which we hoped would be completely unambiguous even for the non-scientist. It was therefore with some considerable regret that I read the following particularly misleading passage in your review: “The belief that such tall stacks would so disperse pollutants that their concentration (my emphasis) would be negligible beyond 100 km was found to have little basis in fact.” The reputation of tall stacks as efficient dispersers of atmospheric pollutants was not called into question by the Report either explicitly or implicitly. Indeed, the conclusions went some way to demonstrate the validity of such a control technology: annual mean sulfur dioxide concentrations range from about 20 pg/m3 close to the major source regions . . . to 2 pg/m3 or lower in the remote areas of Northern and Western Europe. Annual mean sulfate concentrations show a similar distribution with values between 0.5 and 10 pg/m3. Annual mean concentrations of excess sulfate in precipitation range from about 5 mg S04=/Lat sites close to the major source areas, to less than 1 mg S 0 4 = / Lin the far north of Scandinavia. Strong acid in p e cipitation shows a similar distribution.” (Final Report, OECD Study on the Long Range Transport of Air Pollutants, pp 11.2-11.3). In the modeling work (the budget analysis) height of emission was not even con-
sidered so your statement is again invalid. The article, “Exporting, importing SO2 Emissions” (ES&T, December 1977, p 1154), has a more detailed report of the OECD Document than the previous item. While the text is acceptably accurate, the table has fallen foul of editorial aesthetics at the cost of scientific accuracy. Readers are not informed that the figures are accurate to, at best, plus or minus 50%. Moreover, by omitting the total column and the estimated deposition figures for certain, mainly Eastern bloc, countries, a false impression is given of the proportion of any one country’s emissions on depositions in any other country. For example, if, in your version of the table, the separate depositions on Norway are added together, a total of 135 X 103 tons of sulfur is obtained. The contribution of the UK to that figure would then appear to be 45%. However, the total calculated deposition in Norway according to Table 9.4 in the OECD report, is 250 X lo3 tons of sulfur. The proportional contribution by the UK is then 25%. Clearly, by printing selected columns and lines from a table that was conceived as a whole, you have mislead your readership. Indeed, in an area where, in absolute terms, values have little meaning, you have withdrawn from your audience the option of assessing accurately their relative importance.
R.A. Barnes
Oxfordshire, Great Britain
Land-use impact of nondeterioration Dear Sir: Sobering implications of the nondeterioration and nonattainment provisions of the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1977 are aptly presented in the paper by Barbara J. Goldsmith and James R. Mahoney (“Implications of the 1977 Clean Air Act Amendments for Stationary Sources,” ES&T, February 1978, p 144). It should be obvious to any reader that obtaining permission to construct or modify a major source anywhere is going to be a difficult, costly, and time-consuming endeavor.
