The Adirondack Council

News Release

Released, Monday, April 22, 2002 Earth Day!

WILMINGTON, NY -- The Adirondack Council thanked President Bush today for coming to the Adirondacks on Earth Day to discuss acid rain and environmental stewardship at a time when both issues require immediate attention.

Acid Rain

"Acid rain is the single most significant threat to the forests and waters of the Adirondack Park," said Adirondack Council Acting Executive Director Bernard C. Melewski. "Power plants in more than a dozen Midwestern and southern states are responsible for 93 percent of the sulfur dioxide and more than 80 percent of the nitrogen oxides that fall on the Adirondacks each year. We need federal legislation that makes deep cuts in those pollutants nationwide before we will begin to recover from decades of pollution damage carried to us on the winds.

"President Bush's Clear Skies proposal would be sufficient to stop the damage here," Melewski said. "He is the first President to propose a comprehensive solution in the quarter-century we have known about acid rain. And he is the first President to come to the Adirondacks to talk about the problem. For that alone, we owe him our deepest gratitude.

"We hope his visit stimulates action in Congress to bring this environmental scourge to a speedy end," Melewski said. "Whether it is the President's bill, or one of the handful of other similar plans under consideration by Congress, it is important that negotiations begin. For example, Senators Schumer and Clinton sponsor s bill that requires at least an additional 50 percent cut in power-plant-generated sulfur dioxide beyond the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 (a total of a 75 percent cut based on 1984 levels) and a 70 percent cut in nitrogen oxides from those same plants. The President's bill makes those cuts in phase one, and then surpasses them in phase two, to accelerate the rate of recovery. The second phase of the President's is similar to legislation sponsored by Senator Jeffords of Vermont for these pollutants. We expect that the time lines and the depth of cuts will be the subject of negotiations in Congress.

"The main issue is speed," Melewski said. "We need these cuts to begin as soon as possible. For every day we do nothing, another little piece of the Adirondack Park is destroyed. We need action while we still have a Park to save."

The six-million-acre Adirondack Park is the largest Park in the continental United States and contains the largest, intact deciduous forest ecosystem in the world. However, more than 500 of its 2,800 lakes and ponds are too acidic to support their native life. By 2040, the US Environmental Protection Agency predicts that half (1,400 or more) of the Park's lakes and ponds will reach the same point of "critical acidification."

Acid rain depletes the soil's calcium and other alkaline minerals. It also releases toxic metals into the ecosystem that would otherwise be harmlessly bound-up in rock and soil. Forests are destroyed as the calcium needed for tree growth disappears and trees instead absorb aluminum, which is toxic to them. Once the acidic waters drain into lakes and ponds, the aluminum carried by runoff destroys the gill tissues of fish, suffocating them.

"We in the Adirondacks have the worst acid rain damage in the nation," Melewski said. "But we are by no means the only place suffering. Our damage gets a little worse here with every passing season. But we are simply the canary in the coal mine. Damage is spreading to other parts of the country at an alarming rate. Ecosystems are being poisoned from Maine to Georgia and in Colorado and the mountains of the Pacific Coast."

Forest Legacy

The Council also thanked President Bush and members of the New York Congressional delegation for their efforts to secure $2 million in this year's federal Forest Legacy Program to assist New York with the purchase of 26,500 acres of lands, waters and conservation easements from International Paper Co. The lands are located in the wildest portion of the central Adirondacks, in northern Hamilton County. They contain five major lakes, smaller ponds, brooks and streams located in an area where the Adirondack Council has advocated the creation of a 408,000-acre Bob Marshall Great Wilderness (in honor of The Wilderness Society co-founder and Adirondack summer resident who first proposed the wilderness more than 60 years ago).

The lands and waters have been purchased by The Nature Conservancy. Part of the holdings will be resold to the state Department of Environmental Conservation, which is awaiting state legislative approval for the remaining funds needed to complete the deal (about $17 million).

"Lands purchased by the state in this transaction will become part of the Adirondack Forest Preserve," Melewski said. "They will be protected by the Constitution's Forever Wild clause, which states that they may never be leased, sold, exchanged, developed or logged.

"It's the toughest forest land protection law in the world," Melewski said. "It has been in place since 1894. But it won't mean much in the future if we don't stop acid rain."

The Adirondack Council is an 18,000-member, privately funded, not-for-profit organization dedicated to protecting and enhancing the natural character and human communities of the Adirondack Park through research, education, advocacy and legal action.