PORT ANGELES ¬– If you’re an industry spewing 12,310 metric tons of carbon into Earth’s atmosphere via a fleet of dump trucks, helicopters, passenger cars and other fossil-fueled operations, you’d be called a major polluter.
And that, according to the National Park Service carbon emissions inventory, is what Olympic National Park is.
The service reports that ONP, together with North Cascades and Mount Rainier national parks, have one heavy carbon footprint: 30,820 metric tons of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.
In other words, Washington’s triumvirate of national parks packs a wallop in terms of contributing to global climate change.
Carbon dioxide is a major influence on the Earth’s climate, scientists say. Too much of the gas in the atmosphere, and the world’s average temperature rises.
That creates changes such as increasingly destructive storms, floods and — in parks such as Glacier and Olympic — glacial recession.
Carbon emissions from man-made sources are blamed for overtaxing the Earth’s ability to remove carbon from the atmosphere, so carbon “footprints” — the amount of emissions put into the air — are noted.
But at this point in history, the million-plus-acre park in Port Angeles’ and Forks’ back yard can reinvent itself, park officials believe.
ONP can be an inspiration to the world: both a university and a primal experience that changes visitors’ lives long after they’ve gone home.
Large audience
More than 3 million people came to the park last year — that’s one whole city of Chicago — according to traffic counters at Hurricane Ridge, Lake Crescent, the Hoh Rain Forest and other reaches of the park.
The flow presents an enormous audience for new educational programs and for a park staff seeking to set an example of green business practices, said Bill Baccus, the park’s physical scientist and analyst of the carbon inventory.
“The park is a magnet for people,” he said. “If a million visitors get a message of conservation and start living that message, it could have a real impact.”
Education and example-setting are two major components of the climate-change action plan under review by park superintendent Karen Gustin, Baccus and their colleagues.
The plan integrates input from workshops held in February by Climate Friendly Parks, the contractor working with the park on ways to reduce its carbon footprint.
At the same time, the park and its 140 to 300 employees, depending on the season, are responding to what Baccus calls a tall order from the National Park Service.
Pacific West Regional Director Jon Jarvis has set the goal of carbon neutrality by 2016, the centennial of U.S. national parks.
“You’ve got to give them credit” for aiming high, Baccus said.
Action plan
The action plan includes goals for lowering the park’s fuel and energy consumption, making a dent in the 900 tons of garbage trucked out and sent to a landfill in Oregon each year and developing outreach programs for visitors and Peninsula residents.
It also will cover planning for future impacts of climate change — such as flooding — and “continually evaluate areas where we can improve,” Baccus said.
The plan will be finalized by the beginning of summer, just as the park faces its annual flood of humanity.
Its programs won’t be in place right away, of course, but that doesn’t mean people can’t yet see green practices in the park.
Out at gusty Rialto Beach, a small wind-powered generator lights the lights inside the comfort station restroom, said Barb Maynes, park public information officer.
The device is a trial balloon that could be replicated at other park locations, she added.
The station is open only in summer, while the year-round alternative is a vault toilet that uses no electricity.
Elsewhere across the park, Maynes said, energy-efficient appliances, nontoxic cleaning fluids, recycled carpet and biodegradable materials are already being phased in.
Recycling is a major endeavor here, but it’s not a pure positive in terms of pollution, since the stuff has to be hauled away.
For example, last September the Coast Guard helped remove 21 tons of old tires from the Hurricane Ridge ski area and send them to a recycling plant in Olympia.
A carbon-emitting helicopter was used to airlift the tires, Maynes said.
Such aircraft is also used to perform other tasks, such as counting the park’s herds of Roosevelt elk.
In addition, some 150 other park operations vehicles traveled 641,731 miles in 2007, Baccus added.
Vehicle emissions
That accounts for a significant portion of the park’s carbon emissions: The vehicles spewed 580 metric tons of greenhouse gas.
Dwarfing those figures, however, are park visitor miles traveled: nearly 15.5 million miles in 2004, the most recent year for which the statistic is available.
That’s just miles driven within the park, Baccus said. The number doesn’t include the fossil fuel consumed by the jets, buses, vans and cars carrying people in from around the globe.
Since the park is one of the Peninsula’s crucial industries, it’s unlikely that any climate action plan will call for a reduction in travel and tourism.
But a shuttle-bus system in the park could shrink the visitor footprint, Gustin said.
“That’s something we are very interested in,” she said, adding that the park will need federal funding to run buses like those serving Yosemite, Grand Canyon, Rocky Mountain and Denali national parks.
“We would also be looking for private partners to assist us,” Gustin said. “We are getting started on that.”
Sharing a bus up to Hurricane Ridge may not be as convenient as driving one’s own car.
But such public transit, especially if it’s biodiesel-fueled, would be another example introducing visitors to a bright, green future.
“If one person does one thing every day for a year and we multiply that, it’s going to make a difference,” Gustin said.
She and Baccus agree that putting the plan into action isn’t going to bring climate change to a halt. Gustin expects major storms and flooding to be a continuing and costly phenomenon.
But like Baccus, she believes in combining the energies of staff and visitors to preserve the park’s natural splendor and perhaps slow the rate of change.
“Our parks are places people want to be proud of,” Baccus added.
“We are a great place to try to showcase that we can all do something.”
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Editor Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.
