Storm over a Deadly Downpour

By Frederic Golden

Acid rain is shaping up as the ecological issue of the '80s

When Ronald Reagan visited Ottawa last year, the welcome was anything but neighborly. Several hundred Canadians waved placards, symbolically hoisted weathered umbrellas and shouted, "Acid rain, go home!" The President good-naturedly brushed off the demonstration, telling Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, "It made me feel right at home." The shouting has momentarily died down, but simmering anger over acid rain continues to pollute relations between the U.S. and Canada.

A uniquely modern, postindustrial blight, acid rain is as widespread as the winds that disperse it. In the northeast U.S. and in Canada and northern Europe, it is reducing lakes, rivers and ponds to eerily crystalline, lifeless bodies of water, killing off everything from indigenous fish stocks to microscopic vegetation. It is suspected of spiriting away mineral nutrients from the soil on which forests thrive. Its corrosive assault on buildings and water systems costs millions of dollars annually. It may also pose a substantial threat to human health, principally by contaminating public drinking water. Says Canada's Minister of the Environment John Roberts: "Acid rain is one of the most devastating forms of pollution imaginable, an insidious malaria of the biosphere."

Taking note of the strain acid rain has caused in U.S.-Canada relations, Reagan acknowledged his concern to Trudeau. But since then the Administration has only reluctantly confronted the issue, contending that further studies are necessary. At an acid-rain symposium in Pittsburgh in October, Environmental Protection Administrator Anne Gorsuch said, "Our experience of recent years should teach us not to rush in with quick fixes where we know we have an inadequate understanding of existing conditions." Meanwhile the Canadian government has been trying to persuade the Administration to change its position on legislation that would enforce a 50% cut in high-sulfur emissions from U.S. industrial sources by 1990. The measure would cost American utilities and consumers an estimated $2.5 billion to $4 billion a year.

Such natural processes as volcanic eruptions, forest fires and the bacterial decomposition of organic matter produce some of the damaging acidic sulfur and nitrogen compounds. But most experts believe that the current problem is directly traceable to the burning of fossil fuels by power plants, factories and smelting operations and, to a lesser extent, auto emissions. When tall smokestacks vent their fumes, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and traces of such toxic metals as mercury and cadmium mix with water vapor in the atmosphere. Chemical reactions follow that form dilute solutions of nitric and sulfuric acids--acid rain.

The acidic "depositions," as scientists call them, can come down in almost any form, including hail, snow, fog or even dry particles. On the standard chemical scale for measuring acidity or alkalinity, they are defined as having a pH level under 5.6 (a neutral solution has pH 7). Despite the use of tracking balloons and other sophisticated techniques, it is difficult to link acidity with a specific smokestack. But there is little doubt about the damaging effects of acid rain. Absorbed into the soil, it breaks down minerals containing calcium, potassium and aluminum, robbing plants of nutrients. Eventually the acid enters nearby bodies of water, often with a deadly burden of toxic metals that can stunt or kill aquatic Life.

As successive rainfalls make the water increasingly acidic, lakes and rivers turn oddly clear and bluish. Their surviving microorganisms are trapped beneath layers of moss on the bottom; the afflicted water cannot support any but the most primitive forms of life. Some areas, rich in alkaline limestone, are able to resist the assault by "buffering" or neutralizing acid precipitation. But much of New York, New England, eastern Canada and Scandinavia is covered with thin, rocky topsoil left by glaciers long ago, and is particularly vulnerable to acid rain.

In New York's Adirondack Mountains, 212 of the 2,200 lakes and ponds are acidic, dead and fishless. Acid rain has killed aquatic life in at least 10% of New England's 226 largest fresh-water lakes. On Cape Cod in Massachusetts, fishery biologists have stopped restocking eight of the area's top ten fishing ponds because the waters are too acidic for young trout to survive in; the onslaught has spurred experimentation with new breeds of acid-resistant fish.

In the mid-'70s, the Quabbin Reservoir in central Massachusetts became so acidic that it dissolved water conduits and fixtures, producing unhealthy levels of lead in drinking water. Cost since that time for neutralizing chemicals: $1 million annually. In Maine, where the measured acidity of rainfall has increased 40 times in the past 80 years, high levels of toxic mercury, lead and aluminum in acidified streams have killed or deformed salmon embryos. The problem is spreading to other parts of the country. Damage from acid rain has been reported in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Florida and California.

But Canada suffers most severely. Environmental officials project the loss of 48,000 lakes by the end of the century if nothing is done to curb acid rain. Already, 2,000 to 4,000 lakes in Ontario have become so acidified that they can no longer support trout and bass, and some 1,300 more in Quebec are on the brink of destruction. In Nova Scotia, nine rivers used as spawning grounds by Atlantic salmon in the spring no longer teem with fish.

To some extent, environmentalists can blame themselves. In an attempt to reduce industrial smog in 1970, the fledgling Environmental Protection Agency hastily ordered industrial plants to increase the height of their smokestacks. As a result, winds carried pollutants farther afield. The pollutants are now injected so high into the atmosphere that they remain there long enough for the critical chemical reactions to take place. Ironically, the tallest of these smokestacks is in Canada, a 1,250-ft. monster that belches fumes from a nickel smelter in Sudbury, Ont. The area is so bleak and lifeless that U.S. astronauts practiced moon walking there in the late 1960s.

Ottawa admits that Canada may be responsible for as much as 25% of the acid rain in the U.S., but adds that it is on the deficit side of this unhappy balance of trade. It contends that about 70% of the acidic sulfates that fall on Canada come from the U.S., wafted by winds from areas like the industrialized Ohio Valley. Says Environment Minister Roberts: "We are at the end of a gigantic geographical exhaust pipe."

In August 1980, the U.S. and Canada committed themselves to developing an agreement on sulfur and nitrate emissions. President Reagan later promised "to work cooperatively to understand and control the air and water pollution that respects no borders." Even so, bilateral talks on acid rain initiated by the Carter Administration in 1979 are proceeding haltingly. Last February, the Trudeau government proposed cutting emissions in eastern Canada by 50% over the next eight years, at an annual cost to Canadian consumers of $1 billion, if the U.S. would do the same. The Reagan Administration turned aside the Canadian proposal as premature.

In Washington, there is widespread resentment of Canadian lobbying and the manner in which the February proposal was announced to the press before it was formally presented to U.S. negotiators. Asks Representative Edward Madigan, a Republican of Illinois: "If Canada contributes much of its own acid rain and still hasn't installed a single emission-control device on a smokestack, why is it fair to force this on Midwest rate payers?"

Still, sentiment has been building in Congress to deal with acid rain. Last summer a full Senate committee passed an amendment to the 1970 Clean Air Act that would require industries in the 31 states east of the Mississippi to reduce sulfur-dioxide emissions by 8 million tons, or about 35%, over ten years. The measure would raise utility bills in the affected states by 4% to 8%. In view of Washington's preoccupation with cutting the budget, the proposed amendment is not expected to be considered this year.

Most utilities are vociferously opposed to any emission-control program without further research into the causes of acid rain. The industry argues that 1) scientific data on acid rain are still fuzzy, especially in the crucial matter of precisely who is responsible; 2) costs of eliminating sulfur-dioxide emissions by installing expensive "scrubbers" (which collect harmful substances before they are expelled) are prohibitive; and 3) it is questionable whether the situation is critical enough to justify immediate action. Says Joseph Dowd, general counsel for American Electric Power, which serves 2.5 million customers in the Midwest: "Installing scrubbers could break the economic backbone of the Midwest. And there's no assurance it will improve the acidity of rainfall in the East."

The Administration sympathizes with the Midwestern utilities, but has modestly stepped up its funding for acid-rain research, from $18 million in 1982 to $22 million in 1983. It is the only area outside the defense budget where an increase is planned. The money is beginning to produce results. New research in the U.S. and West Germany strongly suggests that acid rain combines with traces of toxic metals emitted into the atmosphere by fossil fuel-burning plants to leach away nutrients that sustain trees. In addition, scientists believe the mixture of acid rain and aluminum trace elements in the soil is absorbed by roots and can choke off a tree's water supply.

"It's as if we were 80% of our way through reading a book," says Chicago Meteorologist Walter Lyons. "We may have to read the last 20% just to make sure there's not a surprise ending." Lyons contends, along with some spokesmen for major U.S. utilities, that waiting for more research is not "going to make that much difference." Because the acid-rain problem involves so many different disciplines and so much poorly understood data, he says, "we're like a lot of blind men grabbing at an elephant."

With an increasing number of areas classified by scientists as "sensitive" to acid stress in both North America and Europe, some environmental experts fear that an even more alarming and often irreversible deterioration may take place before corrective measures are taken. The concern of environmentalists is that industrialists will continue to use delaying tactics to put off costly capital improvements necessary to reduce emissions. Says Richard Ayres, chairman of the National Clean Air Coalition, an amalgam of environmentalist groups: "The costs [for cleaning up emissions] aren't trivial. But neither is the damage. A nation that can afford to spend $5 billion a year on video games can afford the same amount to save its lakes and forests."

--By Frederic Golden.

Reported by Jay Branegan/Washington and John M.Scott/Ottawa

With reporting by Jay Branegan/Washington, John M.Scott/Ottawa

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