Adirondack
Council Celebrates Major Victory on Acid Rain
USEPA Finalizes Clean AIr Interstate Rule
Adirondack
Council's Legislative Director Testifies on the Clean Air
Interstate Rule Reconsideration
December 14, 2005
The air pollution
that causes acid rain has been falling on some areas of the United
States for nearly a century. But the damage acid rain causes
can take a long time to develop. In many of the most heavily
damaged regions - such as the forests of New England - scientists
have been documenting ecological damage since the 1970's. Now,
other regions are discovering that their health and environment
are suffering too.
In 1990, Congress amended the Clear Air Act and
instructed the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to create
the nation's first acid rain control program. In 1992, the Bush
Administration boasted that the new program would "end acidity
in Adirondack lakes and streams." But many recognize right
away that the program would be inadequate to stop the destruction
in the Adirondack Park and the nation's other sensitive ecosystems.
In 1993, the NYS Dept. Of Environmental Conservation, the Natural
Resources Defense Council and the Adirondack Council sued the
EPA over the new program. In a partial settlement of the suit,
the EPA agreed to complete a 1996 report to Congress on whether
the new program would have the desired effect. The report confirmed
our fears. |
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What You Can Do to Help
For a donation
of $50, you can own an attractive Clean Air Certificate. When
you do, the Adirondack Council will permanently retire one ton
of acid rain causing pollution. That means no power company will
ever get its hands on it and one ton of acid rain causing pollution
will never be released into the atmosphere, reducing the amount
of acid rain that can fall in the Adirondacks. The recipient
will receive a Clean Air Certificate that is suitable for framing
and can be made out in the name of whomever you wish.
The Clean Air
Certificate is suitable for framing and can be made out in the
name of whomever you wish. To make a donation and get your own
clean air certificate, please visit our shop.
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The EPA
noted that the current federal acid rain program could only slow
the rate of damage done to the Adirondack Park. More lakes would
die. Meanwhile, acid rain and the air pollution that causes it
are damaging other areas of the nation at an alarming rate. are
being devastated. Spruce forests are dying, streams are losing
their fish. Insect infestations in forests threaten to wipe out
entire species.
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In New England, studies by acid rain research
scientist Dr. Gene Likens showed that the hardwood forest of
New Hampshire's Hubbard Brook area has stopped growing. Sugar
maples are at a particular risk - bad news indeed for furniture
and syrup makers. Up
north, the Canadian government estimates that by 2010, even with
full implementation of the Canadian and American acid rain programs,
an area of |
France and
Britain in southern Canada will continue to receive harmful levels
of acid rain. As many as 95,000 lakes will remain damaged, they
stated in 1997.
Out west, in the Rocky Mountains are finding that power plant
emissions are saturating high-elevation watersheds in Colorado
with acid-causing nitrogen.Evergreen forests are
| losing their needles and tree health is declining
throughout the forest range.Acid rain damage is not
limited to forests and aquatic ecosystems. In Pennsylvania, the
monuments at the Civil War battlefield in Gettysburg are deteriorating
far more quickly then similar structures in places not affected
by acid rain. Throughout the Northeast, stone, brick and block
buildings, as well as automobile finishes, show signs of more
extensive and rapid weathering than counterparts in other regions
of the country. In the Chesapeake Bay and Long Island Sound,
nitrogen-based pollution is overloading the water with nutrients.
This contributes to the overabundance of algae, which when they
die and decay, deplete the water of precious oxygen needed by
all aquatic animals. The condition is known as hypoxia. |
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Closer to our homes, acidity in water supplies is leaching poisonous
metals such as lead into the drinking water. Copper is killing
the beneficial bacteria that make septic systems function. Airborne
particles of sulfur - the chief component of acid rain - also
cause and worsen lung diseases.
The new fish
species that can survive in acidic waters are accumulating mercury in their body tissue.
Now, mammals and birds that live on those fish are showing signs
of mercury contamination. More than 500 lakes and ponds (out
of 2,800) in the Adirondack Park are already too acidic to support
the plants and aquatic wildlife that once existed in them . Each
spring, an entire winter's acidic snowpack melt into the Park's
waters,jolting them with a huge jump in acidity known as "acid
shock." It could not happen at a worse time. Many of the
Park's plants, animals and insects are at their most vulnerable
at the beginning of the growing season.
Red spruce forests on the western-facing slopes of the Park's
High Peaks region are stunted and dying at a rapid pace. Those
forests receive extremely high levels of polluted
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precipitation that blows in from the coal-fired
smokestacks of the Ohio Valley and beyond.
Day after day, even when it doesn't even rain or snow, the pollution
hangs in acid clouds that shroud the mountains in a caustic fog.
Adding insult to a long list of injuries, Canadian studies show
that the larvae of black flies - the bane of spring outdoor activities
in the Northeast and southern Canada - seem to thrive inacidic
waters. Consequently, their populations are exploding as pollution
changes the chemistry of the waters from which they hatch. |
The Adirondack Park is suffering the worst damage in the nation
from acid rain. And because nearly all of the utility plant pollution
that causes acid rain in the Adirondacks comes from outside the
state, New Yorkers alone can do little to prevent the onslaught.
| The good news is that the current acid
rain program is costing utility companies far less than they
predicted when Congress was contemplating the Clear Air Act Amendments
of 1990. As a result, the total cost of finishing the job Congress
intended to do in 1990 would still be less than original estimates. |
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