The Adirondack Council

News Release

IMMEDIATE RELEASE, Friday, April 5, 2002

ALBANY — The Adirondack Council -- one of the nation’s leading organizations in the fight against acid rain -- today praised President Bush for proposing legislation that would halt acid rain’s destruction of the largest wilderness east of the Mississippi River.

“By proposing his Clear Skies Initiative, President Bush has sent a message to Congress that acid rain is a problem we can, and must, solve right now,” said Adirondack Council Acting Executive Director Bernard C. Melewski, speaking alongside EPA Administrator Christie Whitman at a press conference held at the SUNY Atmospheric Sciences Research Center. “The mandatory sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and mercury cuts President Bush proposed in phase one of his plan are very similar to the cuts contained in the Acid Rain Control Act (HR25/S588), a bill sponsored by every member of the New York Congressional delegation. Phase two makes even deeper cuts, which would help accelerate the rate of recovery in the Adirondacks.”

New York’s six-million-acre Adirondack Park has suffered the worst acid rain damage in the nation. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that without tight, new controls on sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides, half of the Park’s 2,800 lakes and ponds will be dead by 2040.

And the damage is spreading. Acid rain has been identified as the cause of forest damage and fish deaths in states from Maine to Florida, as well as the Front Range of the Colorado Rockies and mountains of the Pacific Coast.

“Acid rain damage is spreading throughout the country at an alarming rate. The Adirondacks are really the canary in the coal mine,” Melewski said. “We saw the damage first, because we are the most sensitive to it and we are downwind of a huge number of coal plants. We have very poor soils that quickly lost their capacity to buffer the effects of the acidic rain and snow blown here from the Ohio Valley. EPA’s studies show that acid rain causes harm across the country, and that the harm is getting worse.

“Things are getting pretty grim around here,” Melewski said. “The Adirondacks are hundreds of miles from the nearest coal-fired power plant, in one of the most pristine natural areas in the world, and yet we are suffering the worst damage in America.

“That’s why we are so happy that President Bush is lighting a fire under Congress with this proposal,” he said. “EPA doesn’t have the authority to make the kind of emissions cuts we need to stop the certain destruction of the Adirondack Park. We need legislation that will stop the damage and allow the Park to recover over time. We can recover from this disaster, if we stop the damage now. That’s why we are here today.”

In the Adirondack Park, more than 500 lakes and ponds have already been “critically acidified,” meaning they have become too acidic to support their native life. Vast areas of high-elevation spruce forests across the Park’s mountain tops have been poisoned by acid rain. Each spring, 58 percent of the Park’s 30,000 miles of rivers, brooks and streams are tainted by “acid shock,” when the winter’s acidic snowpack melts in the span of a few weeks. The rivers turn inhospitable just as new life is emerging and is at its most vulnerable stage of development.

The two most hazardous metals associated with acid rain are aluminum and mercury. Each is leached out of rock and soil by acidic water. Mercury is also deposited by emissions from coal-fired power plants. In rich soils that contain large amounts of calcium, the alkalinity of the calcium will buffer the impact of acid rain and forestall damage to plants and animals. As the calcium is used up, acid rain leaches aluminum and mercury from the soil and releases them into the ecosystem.

Trees need calcium to grow. As is disappears from the soil, trees absorb aluminum instead, which is toxic to them. Water not absorbed by trees runs down slope into lakes and rivers, where the aluminum causes immediate damage to fish. Aluminum destroys the gill tissue of living fish (and everything else that breathes water), and prevents fish eggs from hatching by making the outer egg membrane too stiff for the unborn fish to break through.

Mercury is absorbed into the muscle and fat tissues of fish, where it never goes away. Predator fish get a double dose from the water and from the bodies of the fish they eat. Mercury destroys the internal organs and nervous systems of birds, people and other fish-eating mammals.

More than 20 lakes in the Adirondack Park have mercury contamination warnings, cautioning residents to avoid eating certain species. All four of the Catskill Park reservoirs, which supply 95 percent of New York City’s drinking water have state mercury warnings as well.

“President George H.W. Bush signed the first and only federal acid rain legislation in 1990. The law amended the Clean Air Act to require a 50 percent cut in emissions of sulfur dioxide from electric power plants nationwide,” Melewski said. “Congress commissioned a 1996 study that showed that we still needed to cut sulfur dioxide an additional 50 percent and to cut nitrogen oxides by roughly 70 percent. The President’s bill would get us there.

“The bottom line is that Congress has no excuse not to solve the acid rain problem this year,” Melewski said.

“There are two viable bills in each house of Congress and two more being proposed by industry that contain sufficient cuts. With the President’s measure added to that stack, it ought to be a short negotiation. For the sake of the Adirondacks, and the rest of the East Coast, the agreement can’t come soon enough.”

(For more information on acid rain and its impacts, see ACID RAIN: A Continuing National Tragedy, available in print by contacting the Adirondack Council’s Acid Rain Hotline at 1-800-842-PARK.)