The Adirondack Council

News Release

For more information contact: John F. Sheehan
518-432-1770 (office)
518-441-1340 (cell)
518-489-4186 (home)

Released, Wednesday, January 29, 2003

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The Adirondack Council, a leading organization in the fight against acid rain, praised President George W. Bush for making acid rain legislation a top domestic priority for Congress in the 2003 session.

"Last spring, President Bush visited the Adirondack Park on Earth Day to say he was committed to passing legislation that would put a stop to acid rain," said Adirondack Council Executive Director Brian L. Houseal. "We are pleased to see that he chose an address as solemn as the State of the Union to renew that commitment.

"Congress now has an historic opportunity to stop acid rain, smog and haze from harming our environment and our health," he added. "By making deep cuts in sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and mercury pollution from the nation’s smokestacks, we can protect our public lands and waters, and improve the lives of tens of thousands of Americans suffering from air pollution-related lung diseases."

New York’s 6-million-acre Adirondack Park is suffering the worst acid rain damage in the United States. More than 500 of the Park’s 2,800 lakes and ponds are already too acidic to support their native life. Red spruce and fir forests on the Park’s mountain peaks are dying at an alarming rate. Mercury now contaminates the fish in more than 20 Adirondack lakes and all four Catskill Mountain reservoirs that provide 90 percent of New York City’s drinking water.

Acid rain is also causing similar damage in mountain areas from Maine to Georgia, as well as the Colorado Rockies and most of the mountain ranges of California, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency. A long succession of federal reports on acid rain, conducted since 1990, confirm that more than half of the Adirondack Park’s lakes and ponds will be lost to acid rain if nothing more is done to control smokestack pollution.

Founded in 1975, the Adirondack Council has been working to halt acid rain since the late 1970s, when damage to high elevation forests and lakes was first discovered to be related to air pollution. The Council worked with several national and regional organizations to create New York’s ground breaking 1984 acid rain program as well as the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990, which created the current federal program.

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.